Hard and soft skills required

Michael Thurston’s most sophisticated healthcare clients can determine—with 80–90% accuracy—whether a patient will show up for an appointment. Studies have found that no-shows are often linked to underutilized medical resources, increased healthcare costs, decreased access to care and reduced productivity and efficiency, making this kind of information critical to Thurston’s customers, who rely on Xantie, his Salt Lake City-based business intelligence firm, to help them make data-driven business decisions.

Crunching, synthesizing and presenting that data is not just the product of particular software programs, though they are essential. People—and well-trained ones at that—are critical to ensuring that healthcare systems can sort, present and take action on the many terabytes of data they collect. 

“There is an abundance of data in healthcare and oftentimes these data are messy,” says Mark Connolly, Business Intelligence Lead at the University of Chicago Medicine. “It requires both technical skills and interprofessional abilities to leverage data to develop a full picture of the health of our patients and our system as a whole. It takes even more refined expertise to drive change on those insights,” he adds.

Though frequent software and analytics platform updates require practitioners to keep abreast of new features and programs, both Thurston and Connolly say universities can help equip students with specific skills to be more successful when they enter the job market in search of positions in healthcare.

Software products change quickly—exposure to multiple programs helps

Innovation in both data analytics and reporting happens quickly, so most firms do not expect recent graduates to have deep expertise in all the software platforms they might use on the job. “I’d like to see some sort of exposure to Microsoft SQL and Python,” Thurston says, because his new hires will likely work on API integration and machine learning. “Across the board, we’re also looking for people who have exposure to reporting tools like Tableau,” he says. Tableau offers free licenses to students and instructors, and has a new, ready-made Health and Healthcare data visualization course.

His ideal candidates are those who can combine a strong SQL background with data modeling best practices. “They should also have an eye for design so they can create a visually appealing dashboard.” Software programs can make beautiful dashboards, but Thurston says they must be easy to understand as well. “People think a chart is just a chart,” he says. “But I want them to make a chart that looks good alongside everything else that’s also on the page,” he says, adding, “That design eye toward the user experience is kind of missing the mark right now.”

Promoting data literacy among students and audiences

Faculty like New York University’s Melody Goodman are responding to the call for graduates with a diverse set of skills. An Associate Professor of Biostatistics and Associate Dean for Research at NYU’s School of Global Public Health, Dr. Goodman has a keen interest in data ethics and data literacy—not just among those who share information but the individuals who consume it as well. “So much information is being presented,” she says. “Sometimes I feel like the people presenting it don’t even really understand it.” 

She encourages her students, many of whom go on to work for major academic health systems, to become multilingual in software programs so they’re able to adapt to whatever technologies their future employers use.

Data visualization software has become more user friendly, both for data practitioners and their audiences, she says. Tableau, for example, allows her to create a variety of visualizations to meet her communications needs. “Usually as a statistician, I’d have to choose between a bar chart, a histogram or a scatter chart, and I’d need to know in advance which one I wanted to use. With Tableau, I can play around a bit and easily switch between options,” Dr. Goodman says.

That ease of use allows her to show students how they can present data in a variety of ways, depending on the audience. For example, presenting data to policymakers likely requires a different approach than when communicating with a physician. Tableau tools provide enough customization for students to choose from a variety of customizable visualizations and make changes as they develop their final products. “You can use this with non-scientists,” says Dr. Goodman.

“A lot of us know how to teach the skills to do the analysis,” Dr. Goodman says. “It’s trying to teach students how to communicate data to non-statisticians, that is what we’re hoping to do. We think some of these software tools allow us to help them think about that.”

As someone focused on data ethics and equity, Dr. Goodman wants her students to not only consider issues like bias in the analysis of data but also in its presentation. “You can’t just take data at face value or out of the context in which you’ve collected it,” she says. “It’s important for students to understand who the data impacts, who it is generalizable to and who it is not.”

Preparing students to succeed at the speed of change

Hospital systems rely on that kind of deeper analysis and advanced presentation. Connolly’s team at the University of Chicago Medicine has used that blend of data, critical thinking, equity and communications to produce valuable insights for physicians and patients, such as visualizations of COVID-19 impacts and the role of equity in hypertension management.

Connolly doesn’t expect his new hires to produce those kinds of sophisticated, actionable graphics right away, but he does have some advice for universities as they seek to better prepare their students. Because employers have unique expectations for entry-level analysts, it’s nearly impossible for universities to keep up with an ever-changing set of skill requirements. In addition to developing good communicators who can work well in teams, Connolly suggests that institutions provide students with “a foundation, by assessing common skills required of new graduates on a regular basis to drive course offerings accordingly.”