Applying Geospatial Analysis to Population Health

This post is sponsored by Samsung Business. All thoughts and opinions are my own.

Megan Williams wrote a very interesting piece called “Geospatial Analysis: The Next Era of Population Health” in which she highlighted Kaiser’s efforts to use geospatial analysis as part of their population health efforts. Here’s her description of their project:

This means using data to inform policy adjustments and create intervention programs that lead to meaningful change. One of the best examples of this lies with healthcare giant Kaiser Permanente. In April, they launched a database that gave researchers the ability to examine patient DNA and bump it against behavioral and environmental health factors. The goal of the project is to pull information from half a million patients and use it to build one of the most “diverse repositories of environmental, genetic and health data in the world,” which could then be used to inform research around conditions including diabetes and cancer and their relationships to issues including localized violence, pollution, access to quality food and other factors.

This type of effort from Kaiser is quite incredible and I believe will truly be part of the way we shift the cost curve on healthcare costs. One challenge to this effort is that Kaiser has a very different business model than the rest of the healthcare system. They’re in a unique position where their business benefits from these types of population health efforts. Plus, Kaiser is very geographically oriented.

While Kaiser’s business model is currently very different, one could argue that the rest of healthcare is moving towards the Kaiser model. The shift to value based care and accountable care organizations is going to require the same geospatial analysis that Kaiser is building out today. Plus, hospital consolidation is providing real geographic dominance that wasn’t previously available.