#206 The New Horizons For Data And Healthcare Are Exciting For Patients, with Precision Driven Health’s CEO, Kevin Ross

Kevin Ross has had more than 20 years of experience in using data, science and analytics to lead decision-making. Now, as the CEO at Precision Driven Health, and Advisory Board Chair at the NAOI (Natural, Artificial and Organisational Intelligence) Institute, he is placed right at the heart of the data discussion in New Zealand.

He joins us on the Data Futurology podcast this week to discuss the evolving role of data in healthcare, and how it has broadened to really start to embrace personalisation. “We have this fantastic opportunity other there where we know that health doesn’t make use of all the data that’s out there,” he said. “Imagine what you could achieve if you added the computational power of AI into diagnosis and healthcare. The potential is amazing for guiding people to understand themselves and their outcomes.

“It is being driven by consumers looking for health to provide them the same services that they can get elsewhere.”

Ross acknowledges that change is coming slowly, but as it is being driven by customer demand, the change is inevitable. Those healthcare organisations that can adjust will prove to be the disruptive forces in the years ahead.

Elsewhere in this wide-ranging podcast, Ross also discusses the advances in data capture technique, and the implication that has for better analytics and AI. He also talks through the privacy and ethical implications of data use in healthcare, and how data outcomes can be understood and measured within healthcare.

Healthcare is one of the most fascinating sectors when it comes to data, analytics, and patient outcomes, and we’re only scratching the surface of it. Tune in to this in-depth conversation with Ross to get a sense for what’s coming next.

Enjoy the show!

To learn more about Precision Driven Health:  https://precisiondrivenhealth.com/

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“Our goal is to build products and services that are driven by data and data science by leading to both health outcomes that are improvements for people and potentially commercial products as well.”

— Kevin Ross, Precision Driven Health’s CEO

WHAT WE DISCUSSED

0:00 Introduction
04:43 Healthcare is starting to expect more from data expecting and technology and consumers are wanting focus on healthcare services and recommendations and for that to happen increasingly digitally. Is that what you're seeing and the space that you're excited about?
07:20 In terms of consumer expectations, how do they line up with your aims, or with your visions and company visions, and what you're trying to bring into the market? And then I'll ask you about some of the challenges that need to be overcome to bring the vision into reality.
11:21 What are some of the challenges to overcome in order to bring that vision? Closer to now?
15:15 One of the big topics, in the first one that you mentioned, is data availability. So part of it is, where is it? Is it captured or not? And then another part is, are we able to get to a link and use it? How are things looking from your perspective on those fronts?
20:27 How much does the healthcare system in New Zealand influence the type of work and research that you guys can do or focus on? And do you focus on doing things that are more from a global perspective? What are the implications of operating within that healthcare system?
24:50 How do we deliver better outcomes that are particularly helpful to those who need them the most and how do you do it without it costing more ideally cost to list it?
32:38 Can you tell me more about the model of your organization? Working with research corporates, how does the model work?
35:22 How can people and organizations get involved?

EPISODE HIGHLIGHTS

• But if you imagine what you could do, if you sort of added the computational power of artificial intelligence and machine learning into there, that's just simply helping process all of the stuff that's going on, you know, the potential is amazing for guiding people to understand themselves understand, you know, their outcomes.
  

• And I think what you're seeing, it's a slow change, to be honest, it's not happening overnight, but you're gradually seeing that demand coming from the consumer is a different type of industry. And so you're seeing people come at it from a much more customer focused, consumer oriented kind of kind of mindset, which is really starting to think about ultimately what health is all about, which is, can we give people really good care?
  

• You want to be able to personalize without it being really complicated to deliver that, that personalized care.
  

• So what we're trying to get to is a world where you actually take into account everything you know about someone, when you give that advice and everything, you know, sometimes there's a lot, and sometimes it's not much at all, but you're still gonna give advice.
  

• There's just so many things you can do with it, technology, and ultimately, that's all about creating and capturing that data and then translating it into something that's really useful for the clinician and for the ultimately for the consumer, who is sometimes a patient but most of the time not a patient.
  

• And we need a really robust conversation and a good set of tools around protecting people's privacy, and making sure we understand what the limits are of what we should or should not be doing with this technology.
  

• There are massive barriers. But I think of those as opportunities, more than barriers in terms of just bringing the public in the industry along the same journey together to understand what do people really think about the use of their data.
  

• I think COVID experience of the last few years has accelerated the public understanding of what health data might be useful for.
  

• One of the key ones is the issue of underlying bias and in the data, so we were often concerned about minority groups who tends to have poor outcomes in most systems around the world.
  

• New Zealand's gone into an area called the integrated data infrastructure, which is actually linking health to other social services. So that is your education record, maybe a criminal record, maybe your benefits, all these will be housing and all these things are social determinants of health influences those, those influence health and we now have the power to bring data together.
  

• So we've got this thing called the algorithm hub, which is, I think, a really cool initiative, starting out with COVID. But actually going into all of health where we can we can have a really good conversation around what are the models that are appropriate to be part of someone's care?

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