Pictured: JABSOM faculty present at the inaugural healthcare conference Munirih Ta’afaki photo.
Special to UH Med Now
By Munirih R. Ta’afaki, CCRP, Manager, Biostatistics Core
On Thursday, September 20, 2018, University of Hawaiʻi (UH) John A. Burns School of Medicine’s (JABSOM) Office of Biostatistics and Quantitative Health Services (BQHS) faculty presented at the Healthcare Association of Hawaiʻi’s 2018 Inaugural Healthcare Conference: Building a Stronger, Healthier Hawaiʻi: Integrate, Innovate & Inspire. The conference was located at the Hawaiʻi Convention Center on Oahu.
John Chen, PhD, Professor and Interim Chair, Department of Complementary and Integrative Medicine (CIM), and four other department faculty members, Professors Hyeong Jun Ahn, James Davis, Eunjung Lim, and Chathura Siriwardhana, offered a breakout session, “Healthcare Analytics – Building Bridges from Data to Best Practices and Policies in Hawaiʻi.” The session highlighted the importance of healthcare data analytics in evaluating health outcomes to Hawaiʻi; disparities in mental health services utilization among Medicaid beneficiaries; multistate progression modeling of three chronic conditions using Medicare data; managing healthcare networks; and the value of enhancing claims data on health care outcomes using social determinants.
The presentation was well received and attendees expressed interest in learning about advanced healthcare data analytics and how BQHS could help their healthcare organizations better utilize their existing data to guide optimal disease prevention and patient care.
Healthcare analytics is essential in an age of exponential growth in healthcare data. At both macro and micro levels, it concentrates on hospital management, patient records, healthcare costs, and diagnoses, covering a wide range of healthcare industry issues and providing insights into the financial and operational robustness of a healthcare organization.
With increasing data complexity, healthcare analytics have moved from descriptive and diagnostic analytics to predictive and prescriptive analytics, requiring strong analytical skills and data management expertise. For biostatisticians and other data scientists, this is a huge opportunity for them bring value to the healthcare systems as their analyses can provide a unique perspective on how to improve patient care, lower costs, and save lives.
In response to the growing need for large clinical and survey data set analyses, and with the support of several large NIH funded Institutional infrastructure grants, such as RMATRIX (NIMHD U54MD007584) and Ola HAWAIʻI (NIMHD U54MD007601), BQHS has developed a centralized, coordinated analytic resource with a critical mass of healthcare data scientists. As a result, BQHS has been able to provide comprehensive health data management and analysis collaboration and support (see the BQHS website).
Since 2011, BQHS faculty and staff have provided consultations and collaborations on more than 1,000 projects led by investigators from 14 JABSOM Departments and Centers; 12 schools and colleges within the UH system; and over 40 institutions throughout the state of Hawaiʻi. Its faculty and staff have supported numerous grant applications, and authored or co-authored more than 200 peer-reviewed publications. Addressing the emergent need for locally trained health data science professionals, a new Quantitative Health Sciences track was developed and approved in 2018 as part of the Master of Science degree in the Clinical and Translational Research (MSCTR) graduate program, housed in the CIM department. The MSCTR program offers several flexible training options, in both clinical research and quantitative health sciences tracks.
Below, some selected recent peer-reviewed publications by BQHS using healthcare datasets:
1. Lim E, Gandhi K, Siriwardhana C, Davis J, Chen JJ. Racial and ethnic disparity in mental health service utilization among Hawaiʻi Medicaid population. Journal of Mental Health. 2018 (in press). [Mental health disparity using Hawaiʻi Medicaid data]
2. Lim E, Choi SY, Chen JJ, Davis J. Effect of socio-demographics, health-related problems, and family structure on chronic absenteeism among children. Journal of School Health. 2018 (in press). DOI: 10.1080/13557858.2017.1395812. [School absenteeism using Medical Expenditure Panel Survey data]
3. Siriwardhana C, Lim E, Davis J, Chen JJ. Progression of diabetes, ischemic heart disease, and chronic kidney disease in a three chronic conditions multistate model. BMC Public Health. 2018;18:752. DOI:10.1186/s12889-018-5688-y. PMID: 29914451. PMCID: PMC6006736 [Progression of chronic conditions using Hawaiʻi Medicare data]
4. Ahn H, Chen JJ. Proportional weighting algorithm for single-race population estimation using multiracial Census data. Population Review (accepted). [Population estimation using Census data]
5. Gandhi K, Lim E, Davis J, Chen JJ. Racial-ethnic disparities in self-reported health status among US adults adjusted for sociodemographics and multimorbidities, National Health and Nutritional Examination Survey 2011-2014. Ethnicity and Health 2018 Sep; 30(8): 1224-1243. DOI: 10.1080/13557858.2017.1395812. PMID: 29092622. PMCID: PMC6117214. [Racial disparities in self-reported health status using NHANES data]
6. Gandhi K, Lim E, Davis J, Chen JJ. Racial disparities in health services utilization among Medicare fee-for-service beneficiaries adjusting for multiple chronic conditions. Journal of Aging and Health. 2018 Sep; 30(8):1224-1243. DOI: 10.1177/0898264317714143. PMID: 28621152 PMCID: PMC5711604. [Health services utilization disparities using Hawaiʻi Medicare data]
7. Siriwardhana C, Lim E, Aggarwal L, Davis J, Hixon A, Chen JJ. Racial/Ethnic and county-level disparity in inpatient utilization among Hawai‘i Medicaid population. Hawaiʻi Journal of Medicine & Public Health. 2018; 77(5):103-113. PMID: 29761028. PMCID: PMC5945927. [Inpatient utilization using Hawaiʻi Medicaid data]
8. Lim E, Gandhi K, Davis J, Chen JJ. Prevalence of chronic conditions and multimorbidities in a geographically defined geriatric population with diverse races and ethnicities. Journal of Aging and Health. 2018. 30(3): 421-444. DOI: 10.1177/0898264316680903. PMID: 27913765. PMCID: PMC5634944. [Chronic conditions using Hawaiʻi Medicare data]