Healthcare Providers Are Feverishly Investing in Data Science

According to new research published in the Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association, healthcare providers are increasingly investing in data scientists. Organizations in nearly every industry are interested in taking advantage of their data, and healthcare providers generate perhaps the most data of any in the world. Healthcare companies are also dealing with a deluge of largely unstructured data, a type of data that, according to IDC, will make up 80 percent of all data in five years.

The need to run complex and advanced analytics on perpetually large and unorganized data stores is forcing healthcare providers in this direction. What’s more is that data science has been called the best job in America according to popular job recruiting site Glassdoor. This presents another unique challenge, as data scientists are highly sought after and demand some of the highest median salaries of any position in the United States. The report notes that healthcare organizations are most interested in data scientists with experience using common programming languages.

The survey’s purpose is to assist organizations understand the qualifications and skills required for doing advanced analytics in a healthcare setting. The researcher conducted a content analysis of all US-based healthcare data science jobs using an approach that captured and categorized all the core information pertaining to each job listing. Most of the healthcare data science positions were found to be in California and New York (18.2 percent and 11.1 percent respectively), while most organizations are interested in candidates with at least five years of experience.

The vast majority of available healthcare data science jobs are tied to strategic initiatives like performance improvement, innovation and product development. Organizations are also very interested in machine learning skills, and the senior roles saw it as a definitive requirement. Data storytelling and communication were listed as important skills for candidacy as well, because even the worst data scientist needs to be able to communicate their findings.

We encourage you to read the study in full.