#207 From Health to Existential Crisis: How data can be the solution With Yalchin Oytam, Head of Clinical Insights and Analytics at South Eastern Sydney Local Health District (SESLHD)

Healthcare is an industry that stands to benefit a great deal from data and analytics. At the same time, the sensitivity of the data in the sector is extreme and how organisations manage that data is critical. 

Yalchin Oytam, the Head Of Clinical Insights And Analytics at South Eastern Sydney Local Health District (SESLHD) is right in the thick of the discussion. He joins us on the Data Futurology podcast to talk through both the challenge and opportunity.

One of the big challenges that the Australian health system faces, Oytam said, was that primary healthcare was handled by the federal government and secondary care was handled by the states. How the sharing of data between these two is handled is critical to maintaining the customer experience with their health care. More importantly, if data can be leveraged to improve outcomes in primary care, it can reduce the burden on secondary care. Oytam gives the example of diabetic patients being diagnosed and accurately cared for by their GPs have a much lower risk of an unplanned hospital visit.

“When you keep people out of hospital, it also means that they are generally healthier, more productive, and happier. In human terms, the benefit of this goes beyond money,” he said.

The other big opportunity in healthcare is the use of data modelling to personalise healthcare services. Modelling can be used to detect warning signs and risk factors, and more proactively communicate with patients. In the longer term this can result in earlier diagnosis and better risk management – and it’s just one area where this approach to data can lead to meaningful change. “The question is how do we best manage our climate, while also maximizing the quality of life for human beings, and other life forms,” Oytam said.

“A better world certainly is possible.”

Tune in to the podcast for an in-depth discussion on how data can deliver better health and lifestyle outcomes for us all.

Enjoy the show!

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“This risk of hospitalisation proved extremely useful, not only in integrated care that I mentioned, but when something really bizarre and unexpected happened, we now call it COVID-19, the score that we had built, was the single best predictor of who was going to end up in hospital and who was going to end up in ICU if they got the disease.”

— Yalchin Oytam, Head of Clinical Insights and Analytics at South Eastern Sydney Local Health District

WHAT WE DISCUSSED

00:00 Introduction
03:15 Tell us about your remit and your role at the moment?
04:35 How would you describe the role of the local Health district?
06:52 Besides the hospital data, what other type of data can would you have access to?
17:16 How do you choose what issues to what to tackle?
23:48 Could you tell us a little bit more propensity score matching, what was the propensity that you were calculating to match on, and about the data available?
30:41 Yalchin tells us how socio economic factors correlate with health.
36:35 What possibilities are you excited about that can be unlocked through this revolution into the future?

EPISODE HIGHLIGHTS

• And that's essentially the power of data science, basically highlighting the nature, the truth of things, and being able to recognise a human being living in a complex, concrete, multi-dimensional sort of society.

• It's not just about keeping people out of hospital, when you keep people out of hospital, it also means that they are generally healthier, healthier people are more productive, healthy  in every way, culturally, economically and so they are happier.

• This risk of hospitalisation proved extremely useful, not only in integrated care that I mentioned, but when something really bizarre and unexpected happened, we now call it COVID-19. So, when that happened, the score that we had built, was the single best predictor of who was going to end up in hospital and who was going to end up in ICU if they got the disease. So, this insight we will prove absolutely critical in our sort of management on COVID.

• So that early knowledge in a quantified statistical form, not in the form of opinions could then be presented to the government. And of course, we did do that. And the government did take the right action. And we ended up being one of the best states and best countries in the world in terms of managing COVID. 

• From the day they're born, until the day they die, we can decide what we can understand or decide, we can extract if you like, the risks that this person faces from a health perspective. And we can devise interventions to minimize those risks. So basically, we're optimizing quality of life for everyone throughout their life. That's the massive benefit.

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