How HSL is using data for optimum operational visibility
Business intelligence is a somewhat broad term, and can refer to any number of things. In Ben Holgado’s case it’s all about using data for optimum operational visibility. As part of the operations department, Ben’s team uses a tool called Tableau to obtain data from across the organisation’s various digital systems.
Ben stresses the growing importance of using data effectively:
“Data is everywhere, it’s a commodity that everyone talks about. It’s a double-edged sword: people get frightened about what you are doing with data, but as long as people are responsible, you can do amazing things with data.”
Meeting the challenges of expansion
Ben’s route to business intelligence has been varied, but he has been part of Sonic Healthcare UK for nearly 20 years. He joined straight out of university, having obtained a degree in genetics, and worked in the Molecular Genetics Department for five years, becoming a clinical scientist.
He then decided to move into quality management, where he worked for another five years, gaining greater exposure to the rest of the business.
At this point, the company was growing rapidly and Group Laboratory Director, Tim Herriman, recruited Ben to support him in the expansion of his remit. The organisation was becoming far less London-centric, with laboratories joining from all over the country, and it was becoming increasingly difficult to maintain full operational visibility by simply visiting every site in person.
Ultimately, a tool was needed to use the organisation’s data more effectively so as to visualise operations from afar. Tableau was duly selected for the task, a tool that is able to pull data out of any kind of database:
“It’s given us operational visibility remotely, where we have an ever- growing network of laboratories.”
Five years on, Tableau has become an incredibly powerful tool, connected as it is to every laboratory information system that is part of Sonic Healthcare UK. At first, they were mainly interested in visualising the data on incidents and complaints as Q-Pulse was the first database they connected to, but today they are able to pull data around everything from quality control to staff absences and training, as well as information around patient sample journeys through every stage of the transport and testing process:
“Tableau gives us a tool to monitor all of that as it flows through the UK.”
Leading the charge
Ben admits that healthcare sometimes lags behind the likes of marketing and finance in its adoption of technical solutions:
“We’re exploring all avenues. It’s uncharted territory for us. When it comes to tech adoption, healthcare is very often behind other industries, for example in adopting things like Tableau. I used to go to their user groups, and I used to think about how we could use the things I was learning there ourselves.”
He is proud, then, to have been at the forefront of this kind of use of data in the healthcare sector:
“We were pushing the envelope. The healthcare sector in general is getting better, but I like to think that we were leaders in terms of what we were doing with data.
“Regulators are now frequently holding us up as examples of best practice from an operational visibility point of view.”
Looking ahead
What’s next for the Business Intelligence team? Anything and everything, it seems:
“There are infinite possibilities: it’s only limited by the imagination of the person confronted with a problem. There’s almost always a data component to the final solution.”
A world of opportunity, then, for Sonic Healthcare UK to make continual strides into the future within an ever data-driven world.