In the old times , a primary physician- family practitioner was truly a “Doctor” with direct contact with the patient , his family , his neighbors and his relatives too ! He had all the contacts , knowledge and connections with the patient’s family and surrounding. Family practice was more like a friendly connection with your local neighborhood .. a “Doctor uncle / aunt ” of the children of neighborhood. Gradually this trend diminished and Primary Physician became just a point of contact for a referral to the specialist or a super-specialist. The Family practitioner professionals almost got extinct and gave way to the referring PCP (primary care physician). This is particularly true with the US healthcare system.
The same story goes more or less in the Indian context too. The disappearance of this grass-root level physicians who had direct contact and “social” knowledge of the patient population is a grave concern. This has not just caused huge rise in cost of healthcare but also has brought down the quality of healthcare and the ability to provide cost-effective therapies.
This is exactly what Population Health Research thrives to achieve through pattern recognition in healthcare and related social data gathered through wearables (IoT) correlating to the databases of Information archived earlier through EMR , EHR , Patient Registries etc.
The arrival of Big-Data in Healthcare coupled with Analytics giving comprehensive picture of a patient and similar cohorts is one way of recognizing “patterns” of data in healthcare setup. It gives a wholesome picture of the healthcare status and points to a “patient-centric”, “tailor-made”, “personalized”, “cost-effective” treatment plan that includes curative and also preventive modes.
Thus , Population Health Research Management mimics the old time “Family Physician” by understanding patients comprehensively and enabling the care team to be more effective, efficient and coordinated in “patient-centered” treatments.
The Big Data Analytics technology is helping us decipher the “patterns” in health-medical data. The wisdom gained by a “Senior Family Physician” practicing medicine for decades , the one he gets through his experience, is now delivered by the data that the business intelligence (BI) systems and ANN (Artificial Neural Networks) process with in fraction of seconds presented in the form of dashboards and reports !
Will Big Data in Healthcare , Analytics and Population Health bring back charm of Primary Healthcare ? … a short answer is.. NO
The charm of old time Family practice in Medicine will never return, but, with the emerging practice of Population Health Management, Primary Care Physicians (PCPs) will have a better handle over the patient care , chronic disease management and overall population healthcare in cost-effective manner. The Precision Medicine initiative of President Obama is trying to achieve this in step wise manner to make the US healthcare system affordable, efficient and cost-effective.
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Clinical Scientist 
Reblogged this on Health Care Blog.
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