Arkos Health prescribes Tableau to deliver better data-led healthcare outcomes for patients

Arkos Health is using Tableau business intelligence technology to deliver actionable insights that are helping to improve clinical services and operational activities.

Jeff Singman, EVP of Technology at Arkos Health, says Tableau is a key element of his organization’s push to use digital and data services to create a complete picture of an individual’s health condition and its ongoing efforts to boost business performance:

It's really about more efficient operational processes, more visibility into the challenges our patient population faces, and it gives us the ability to focus our efforts on those who need it most.

Arkos Health is moving from a self-built platform to a best-of-breed and proprietary technology stack, known as Arkos 360. The organization uses AWS cloud for hosting and storage. On top of that cloud platform is a data management layer that includes MuleSoft technology, which provides ingestion processes, a data lake, and robotic process automation. 

A blueEHR electronic health record platform runs across the data management layer and provides a single view into patient data. This record is linked to a range of data-led applications, including Salesforce services and Tableau business intelligence. Arkos uses insight from this experience engine to deliver better outcomes for patients, says Singman:

We meld the technology with clinical services. We're seeing incredible demand for our services. It's not just the number of patients, there’s also diverse programs for those patients, so we can deliver value-based care effectively. As you scale, your technology stack has to evolve. We want to improve the clinical, financial and operational outcomes for patients, payers and providers.

It’s taken two years for Arkos to move from its original self-built platform to its new digital stack. Singman's team evaluated potential application-based solutions that would allow the organization to make the most of its data. As well as purpose-built services, they also considered low code/no code solutions, but determined that Salesforce and Tableau offered a large amount of customization and configuration options. According to Singman: 

We chose to go that way, because would you build your own operating system today? No, and I look at Tableau as being an operating system for our data needs around AI, automation, analytics and visualization. 

Singman says Tableau also offers strong support for omni-channel communications, which is a crucial element of the Arkos approach. The organization uses data-led patient engagement to outline the scale of an individual’s healthcare challenges and to tailor their journey:

If you can engage, you can use your data and analytics to drive improvements in care management and scheduling, in practical encounters, such as tele-health and home visits, and in primary care coordination. We also have a patient portal, which provides information and support.

Arkos has been a Salesforce user for many years, but it started refining the latest iteration of Arkos 360 about a year ago. As part of that process, the organization began implementing Tableau, which will be fully integrated by September this year. Singman says Arkos uses the data it collects to optimize its engagement activities with patients and providers:

It's a combination of data aggregation, care delivery, and analysing all of that insight, both from what we do, but also from physicians and hospitals. We get all this data in real time and we're able to aggregate that and optimise it in a continuous way, so that it drives our actions and leads to better outcomes for patients, payers and providers.

Producing real-world benefits

It can be tricky for business leaders to integrate new data technologies into an existing way of working. Singman argues that one of the big advantages for Arkos is that many healthcare processes are already data-driven, whether information is displayed in a chart, used in a lab, or created through a scan. The integral role of data in healthcare means it’s been easier to integrate Tableau into Arkos 360, but he advises other IT leaders to think carefully about cultural considerations:

Get stakeholder and user feedback and get their goals before you do anything. From a technology perspective, I like to say to my users, ‘Imagine a perfect world. Where would you like to be?’ Then, we work back from there. Success is not about introducing technology; it's about providing business benefits.

Now that Tableau is being integrated into day-to-day healthcare activities at Arkos, Singman says a range of benefits are clear:

It’s producing better insights and analytics for our providers to improve patient care. It gives a higher-touch capability that allows our teams to focus on the people with the most need within the population. And it allows us to optimise our clinical operations based on the data that comes out of the analytics.

Singman is eager for further product innovation. He attended Salesforce’s developer conference TrailblazerDX 2023 recently and expects to see more use of Artificial Intelligence in Tableau analytics and in the user interface in the future: 

What Salesforce has started doing with Einstein, ChatGPT and their partnership with open AI is incredible. I believe access to data, and the ability to manipulate that data, is going to be driven by more real-time insight and more patient engagement. 

While Arkos could have used a range of providers and routes to create its experience engine, Singman believes the partnership with Tableau is producing business benefits and better patient outcomes:

We could have gone with a bespoke application, but we chose to go with this broader, deeper enablement platform that we can use and then leverage the enhancements that are being made on a quarterly basis that are really impactful for our business.

For other digital leaders who are thinking of implementing Tableau and Salesforce technology, Singman says it’s critical to focus on business goals and desired outcomes:

Engage with your stakeholders to derive a comprehensive set of requirements and then go and look at what you can leverage both inside and outside your market. Advancements and technological innovations are happening in multiple verticals. And there's no reason why the healthcare industry can't leverage that collective innovation and focus it to produce better outcomes.