The world of health care is starting to be disrupted by a hurricane that has taken the shape of data analytics. Except this particular storm is one that’s going to help foster an unprecedented level of understanding when it comes to a person’s health.

IBM Watson is starting to help physicians look for best care pathways. Google just received a patent for smart contact lenses to help people measure their glucose levels. Predictive models will support physicians’ efforts to help millions of high-risk patients avoid diabetes. Sequencing the human genome will enable us to one day stop diseases right in their tracks. And The Internet of Things will provide an avalanche of data that will redefine the term “wearable.”

I’ve seen firsthand how data analytics can help improve the lives of people. We manage an estimated 1.5 petabytes of data that’s based off of claims data and other patient information. That’s 150 times the information stored in the digitized version of all the print collections of the Library of Congress.

But it’s really not just about the amount of data collected. It’s how you apply analytics to the data you collect to identify moments of influence where our trusted provider partners can use the data to help a person improve his or her health.

New sources for data will continue to expand. The challenge will be harnessing this data, and applying it to real-time clinical decision-making. While the data will enable us to develop an understanding of a person’s health in unprecedented detail, it also leads to a question: Will this enable us to help make our country healthier?

Deep Personalization

Historically, population health management has focused on the use of statistical metrics to quantify the health of communities. Statistical analysis primarily focused on metrics such as prevalence of disease states, and less on how the lifestyles of people have led to health challenges. Individuals are not a condition or a statistic. They are people with complex personalities, desires and years of learning, and we need an approach that reflects this complexity at an individual level.

For us to get to the next level of understanding health at an individual level, we need to embrace the concept of deep personalization, where the individual is quantified along multiple axes of personal and behavioral preferences. People have behavioral and other personal preferences that influence their lifestyles. For example, deep personalization helps us understand that a particular individual is compliant on medications and preventive screenings but does not eat healthy or exercise. 

In order to make an impact on a person’s health, the answer does not rest solely in a clinical or an analytics solution. It’s the ability to integrate them, and create a virtuous cycle, that produces this deep personalization. So how can we achieve this? It starts by understanding how the culture we’ve created over decades has led to our current predicament, because if you want to improve health, it must be personalized.

Health is Hard

Despite all of the advances in technology, and the data that’s generated based on our daily activities, it’s the choices we make on a daily basis as part of our lifestyles, over the course of our lifetimes, that have created the major health challenges we face.

It’s no secret our society has serious health challenges. We’ve made health hard because we’ve made everything else easy.

Recently, I sat down with a renowned professor at an Ivy League school. The professor talked about how our advances in the world are one of the reasons health is declining, saying it was inherent in the fabric of our society because it’s easier to become lazy.

His comments made me think about the convenience culture we have created that enables us to take short cuts. Tablets take the place of kids playing outside. Businesses don’t fully understand the impact that sitting nine hours a day can have on a person’s health.

Take chronic conditions, which account for three of every four dollars spent on health care each year. Many chronic conditions – from diabetes to heart disease – are the result of decisions we make over the course of our daily lives. Do we choose fajitas or the grilled chicken salad? Do we walk for an hour or pull out the iPad and read an e-book instead? Do we take the conference call outside on a stroll or do we sit for an hour? Do we put the phone down when we get home and spend quality time with our family?

We’ve all been there, and it’s easier said than done for many. Because when it comes to helping someone improve his or her health, it’s important to take into account how the person’s lifestyle has led to their current situation, for better and for worse.

Data analytics can enable us to change health care for the better, but its transformative power can only be applied if the situation supports it. And a recent encounter shows just how important this is to make an impact on one’s health.

Face-to-Face

One of the benefits of my role is that I get to meet firsthand the people who have entrusted us with serving as their health partner. This was the case a few weeks ago with a member I went to visit with members of Humana’s Innovation team.  

“Martha,” a 62-year-old Medicare Advantage member, lives in a small, two-bedroom apartment in an economically challenged neighborhood near downtown Louisville, Ky. The purpose of the visit was for us to further our understanding of how Martha’s remote monitoring device was monitoring her fluids and to see how she was coping with multiple chronic conditions.

Martha is – sadly – facing some serious health challenges. She had a heart attack in 2009 and is now suffering from Congestive Heart Failure (CHF). Martha also has Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD), a result of having smoked for more than 20 years. She’s highly compliant with her drugs and weigh-ins, but that doesn’t influence her lifestyle.

Martha shared with me that she was once a caretaker for her mother, who, like her father, died from CHF. She also talked about the tough impact her chronic diseases have on her. Martha said, “I learned what life is like when you don’t breathe.” If it’s humid out – Louisville can be a humid place – it affects her ability to breathe on a day-to-day basis, a result of her COPD.

There were two comments Martha made that illustrated the important aspect of care: Martha said she liked how the Humana nurse was soothing, and she appreciates it when she’s “not talked down to” by her physicians, indicating that she’s more receptive to people with whom she connects when it comes to her health.

It’s Not More “Steps”

As we neared the end of the visit, Martha said something to me that was a significant reminder that not everyone’s health goals are the same:

• “As I age, my purpose becomes simpler. I want to see my grandchildren get married.”

While there are millions of people with Medicare who live very active lifestyles, we must never forget that there are a high number of people who have entirely different goals, some of which start with staying alive.

It’s very clear that Martha faces some serious challenges due to her heart and lung diseases. Her fight is limited when it comes to extending her life, but she’ll do the necessary things to keep going. But anything that requires discipline or discomfort is going to be a challenge.

So what reaches Martha? What can we do for her? We can continue to provide her with the comfort and care she welcomes; give her tools and devices to monitor her disease progression; and assist through nudges, education and compassion. Martha’s grandchildren could also help by getting her to eat a salad when they go out to eat instead of roast beef, since she’s watching her sodium.

We are going up against 60-plus years of culture that led to her conditions. But the more we can build a detailed understanding of Martha’s  health — not just through the data we collect, but also through our  personalized, holistic “soothing” approach to care — the more Martha will have a better chance of reaching her goals.

It’s always difficult to see someone like Martha suffer from disease. As I left Martha’s apartment  and discussed the situation with our team, we thought about what we could do further to not only help Martha improve her health but also help her achieve her goal of seeing her grandchildren get married. 

The Bigger Picture

Making an impact on Martha’s health will not be easy. To do so will require a deep understanding of her behaviors so that we can channel the clinical aspects of care and data analytics. By evolving toward deep personalization, a person is not simply viewed as healthy or non-healthy. The personal and behavioral preferences, which lead to good and bad health habits, are addressed through a highly customized approach to their health.

As we saw with Martha, her nurse has such a critical influence on her health because of a trusting, empathetic relationship built over time. She is taking her medication, but she’s not eating right. With Martha, the remote monitoring program she’s involved with could be expanded to funnel information, such as fluctuations in her weight, to her clinicians in real-time.

It’s also important to remember that it’s not just the clinical or emotional engagement; it’s the home environment. Ensuring that the home is safe will help each family member avoid falls. With our Humana At Home division, we’re sending nurses and other care professionals into the homes of our members living with multiple chronic conditions. This division consists of 8,000 associates and 10,000 contracted partners whose primary purpose is to help older adults with multiple chronic conditions and functional, behavioral and/or cognitive limitations live safely in their homes.

A Way Forward

Let’s evolve our understanding of a person’s health by going beyond the simple characterization of healthy or unhealthy. We’re all people who, regardless of how good our health is, do many things right, but let some things lapse.

If we want to improve this understanding of the people we care for, it starts by looking them directly in the eye. These people need to truly believe that we ‘have their back;” will be there for them; and are on the journey with them, every step of the way. If a strong relationship does not exist between the care professional and the individual, we won’t have an impact.

Harnessing the power of data analytics, based on strong relationships between caregivers and other clinical experts (such as nurses and physicians), can enable the deep personalization necessary for improving health outcomes. The more we understand about the preferences and needs of the people we serve through deep personalization, the greater the impact data analytics can have. And the more we improve our data analytics capabilities, the more we’ll be able to advance and apply the concept of Contextification – predicting and delivering a service based on location, time and individual preferences. This will help future generations alter their behavioral preferences and make fewer unwise decisions about health.

Over the last year, we’ve used Humana’s data analytics to close more than 4.3 million gaps in care and identified millions of high-risk members through predictive modeling. Yet we’ve only scratched the surface.

We have an unprecedented opportunity in health care to harness the expertise of world-class clinicians, combined with the untapped power of data analytics, to improve the health of our society. Let’s start by helping Martha not only see her grandchildren get married, but help her improve her health so she can better enjoy the experience.

And the time to do that has arrived.