Background: The benefits of data and analytics for health care systems and single providers is an increasingly investigated field in digital health literature. Electronic health records (EHR), for example, can improve quality of care. Emerging analytics tools based on artificial intelligence show the potential to assist physicians in day-to-day workflows. Yet, single health care providers also need information regarding the economic impact when deciding on potential adoption of these tools. Objective: This paper examines the question of whether data and analytics provide economic advantages or disadvantages for health care providers. The goal is to provide a comprehensive overview including a variety of technologies beyond computer-based patient records. Ultimately, findings are also intended to determine whether economic barriers for adoption by providers could exist. Methods: A systematic literature search of the PubMed and Google Scholar online databases was conducted, following the hermeneutic methodology that encourages iterative search and interpretation cycles. After applying inclusion and exclusion criteria to 165 initially identified studies, 50 were included for qualitative synthesis and topic-based clustering. Results: The review identified 5 major technology categories, namely EHRs (n=30), computerized clinical decision support (n=8), advanced analytics (n=5), business analytics (n=5), and telemedicine (n=2). Overall, 62% (31/50) of the reviewed studies indicated a positive economic impact for providers either via direct cost or revenue effects or via indirect efficiency or productivity improvements. When differentiating between categories, however, an ambiguous picture emerged for EHR, whereas analytics technologies like computerized clinical decision support and advanced analytics predominantly showed economic benefits. Conclusions: The research question of whether data and analytics create economic benefits for health care providers cannot be answered uniformly. The results indicate ambiguous effects for EHRs, here representing data, and mainly positive effects for the significantly less studied analytics field. The mixed results regarding EHRs can create an economic barrier for adoption by providers. This barrier can translate into a bottleneck to positive economic effects of analytics technologies relying on EHR data. Ultimately, more research on economic effects of technologies other than EHRs is needed to generate a more reliable evidence base.

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中文翻译：

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数据和分析对医疗保健提供者的经济价值：解释学系统文献综述

背景：数据和分析对医疗保健系统和单一提供商的好处是数字健康文献中越来越多的研究领域。例如，电子健康记录 (EHR) 可以提高护理质量。基于人工智能的新兴分析工具显示出协助医生日常工作流程的潜力。然而，单一医疗保健提供者在决定是否采用这些工具时还需要有关经济影响的信息。目标：本文探讨了数据和分析是否为医疗保健提供者提供经济优势或劣势的问题。目标是提供全面的概述，包括基于计算机的患者记录之外的各种技术。最终，研究结果还旨在确定提供商采用该技术是否存在经济障碍。方法：遵循鼓励迭代搜索和解释循环的解释学方法，对 PubMed 和 Google Scholar 在线数据库进行系统文献检索。在对 165 项最初确定的研究应用纳入和排除标准后，其中 50 项被纳入进行定性综合和基于主题的聚类。结果：审查确定了 5 个主要技术类别，即 EHR (n=30)、计算机化临床决策支持 (n=8)、高级分析 (n=5)、业务分析 (n=5) 和远程医疗 (n=2) ）。总体而言，62% (31/50) 的审查研究表明，通过直接成本或收入影响或通过间接效率或生产力提高，对提供商产生积极的经济影响。然而，在区分类别时，EHR 出现了模糊的情况，而计算机化临床决策支持和高级分析等分析技术主要显示了经济效益。结论：数据和分析是否为医疗保健提供者创造经济效益的研究问题无法得到统一回答。结果表明，电子病历（这里代表数据）的影响不明确，而对于研究较少的分析领域来说，主要是积极的影响。有关电子病历的好坏参半的结果可能会对提供者采用电子病历造成经济障碍。这一障碍可能会成为依赖 EHR 数据的分析技术产生积极经济影响的瓶颈。最终，需要对电子病历以外的技术的经济影响进行更多研究，以产生更可靠的证据基础。

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