I know it’s been a while since my last post here.
Next week is PASS Summit and it will mark 3 years since my last session at SQL PASS Summit 2015. I have learned a lot since then and joined a new company as Data Architect to help build a new web analytics and audience identity product. I shifted my focus from SQL Server on premise to the AWS Cloud. I learned a lot about AWS, migrated instances to SQL Server on RDS as well as traditional EC2 instances and then shifted into Big Data on AWS, working with an amazing team to build a datalake for the new product I helped develop in the last 3 years. Earlier this year I passed the exam to become a AWS Certified Solution Architect – Associate and I’m working on getting the Big Data – Specialty Certification.
But next week marks a new chapter in my life and I cannot contain my excitement. I will be joining a leading healthcare decision support technology company as their Big Data Architect and work with another great team to build a cloud product that I hope will help solve one of the biggest problems in America – The cost of healthcare. Needless to say that this is a subject I am extremely passionate about. The greatest country in the world has a deep fundamental problem – the majority of healthcare providers both individuals and corporations don’t know how much a medical procedure should cost. This means that if you ask a doctor before a procedure how much will it cost the answer will be “I DON’T KNOW”. We developed an industry that has providers on one side wanting to charge more to cover their costs and be profitable because they do not have detailed information and on the other side medical insurance wanting to negotiate the same cost down to stay competitive. But regardless if you are insured, uninsured or underinsured the costs of healthcare will shift towards those who pay … the patients and their employer,
In all honesty, accurately estimating the cost of helthcare is not a simple problem and I believe it is a global problem. Even if most countries have standardized costs for every procedure everyone is different. The cost is just an average cost that does not account for factors like equipment maintenance cost, healthcare professional’s experience, legal costs or unknown side effects that can occur following the procedure because everyone is different. Just like any average that can change year over year and it does. If you approximate your car expenses based on the average maintenance and fuel cost of the first 3 years of owning your first car and then you buy a more expensive models you would expect the cost to change and it would not be accurate to use the old car even with some padding to estimate the new cost. Imagine a world where you can use a business inteligence tools to analyse all the different costs in real time and gain insights that can help you rapidly make decisions to save money , budget more accurately and maybe ultimately improve the outcomes and lives of patients. Can you tell I’m excited?
I promise I will start to write more about technologies I’ve used, healthcare costs and othe things I’ve learned as well as new technologies that I have yet to discover and implement.
