The continually changing state of healthcare needs and interoperability of data in Health Information Technology (HIT) systems is growing exponentially. The need to have and consume discreet data exchanges between electronic medical records (EMR) and electronic health records (EHR), Health Information Exchange (HIE) and Personal Health Records (PHR) portals is in the forefront. The ability to exchange a fully coded Continuity of Care Document (CCD), availability to trigger automatic delivery once an event in care occurs, and to deliver the SAML interface is essential for adoption and use in the industry by all Health Information Technology groups. Ambiguity of the coded CCD mapping and missing naming definitions is hindering interoperability. Vendors need to quickly recognize that they no longer have control over consumers or their behaviors. Data access continues to rapidly empower the consumer but creates major challenges for healthcare providers and vendors. This shift also embodies the need to provide needed deliverables to users with even greater security and speed.  Data virtualization in healthcare and agile code morphing by vendors will be key to driving quick adoption by consumers (patients, providers and payors). 

The pace of competition in business is increasing, fed in part by advances in information dissemination and computing power.  It doesn't matter what type of business, constant improvement is the focus.

The obvious sector is retail, where margins are often thin, competition can be fierce, and immediate product feedback allows businesses to adjust their advertising, promotions, or product placement in time frames inconceivable even a decade ago.    

A customer on the Internet can experience a new set of offers based on aggregate information from thousands of their fellow shoppers, drawn from their reaction to an offer experienced within the previous hours or even minutes.

Retail isn't the only sector subject to demands for constant improvement.  Healthcare, with pressure from government, constant innovations in treatment, and an emerging sense of consumerism on the part of patients, is seeking to identify improved practices and achieve better patient communication.

Utilities, faced with constrained resources and ever increasing need, are looking to smart feedback systems to help them tune their supply and demand balances, based on how people react to various factors in their consumption of services.

The solution to all of these demands for constant improvement is found in analytics.

What is analytics, really?  

Analytics is about getting feedback from existing systems to determine how to alter them for the better.

To do this, data (often large amounts) is drawn from existing systems, and compared against desired outcomes.  Where the result doesn't match the expectation, further analysis can be done to see where things are going wrong.  The system is altered, and the cycle starts again.  Doing this over and over again can lead to deeper customer satisfaction and better rewards to the provider.

Predictive analytics takes this one step further.  By applying algorithms based on extending existing data patterns, expected results of possible changes to the system can be modeled.

The terms ‘Cloud Computing’ and ‘DevOps’ are terms and people are trying to figure out what they mean.  We saw something similar with SOA a few years ago but things have settled out and creating services is becoming standard practice.  I expect similar things to happen with DevOps and Cloud.