To Our Valued Customers and Colleagues:
Well, that was quite a week! And, it looks like it's going to be quite a year…
COVID-19, now officially a pandemic, first appeared in China nearly four months ago and the US is finally beginning to grapple in earnest with what could become the nation's most destructive public health crisis in more than a century. The stock market spent much of last week in freefall, giving up nearly three years' worth of gains in the span of four days before a late Friday surge. All sporting events and business conferences are essentially canceled through June 2020. Tom Hanks and his wife are sick. And doctors and scientists are loudly sounding the alarm that things will likely get much worse before they get better.
First, during this unprecedented global health crisis, we want to personally assure you that Gray Matter Analytics is taking action to both protect our employees and maintain operational continuity and stability to deliver the consistent service to our clients. We have business continuity plans in place, and we are well prepared to continue delivering data analytics services and support to our clients to weather this crisis. Now, more than ever, the world needs to come together. We have to bring forth the best minds in healthcare and technology and innovate. If there’s anything positive to be said about the situation, it’s that the world is being put to the test. As a result, we are being creative and collaborative, and strengthening our toolset — and more innovations are to come.
Big Data’s Role
Predictive analytics and Big Data have become a powerful tool for combating deadly disease outbreaks such as SARS. The SARS outbreak brought with it devastating effects that claimed the lives of almost 1,000 people. The outbreak alert about the COVID-19 on December 2019 is another clear example attesting to the powerful nature of AI and technology to increase awareness and provide support to manage this crisis. This became even more evident as the outbreak spread globally on February 2nd, 2020.
Natural language processing (NLP) is one tool used by Gray Matter Analytics that can enable our clients to track diseases, identify individuals at risk and provide clues to help manage the situation. For instance, NLP can analyze individual and community data in a specific geographic area and use the information to assist in forecasting trouble spots and prevalence of diseases. AI saves time and resources by empowering health professionals with information to communicate and deploy prevention measures.
Having the ability to integrate and aggregate data will allow you to view data on a dashboard, and to see an overview of the COVID-19 disease outbreak based on data updated by the minute, including the number of confirmed new cases, recovered cases and deaths from the virus filtered by geographic location, patient population or other demographic factors.
Cloud-Based Analytics
While each of us certainly hopes that COVID-19 will be under control soon, the reality is that most businesses have contingency plans that prepare for a prolonged crisis, with an emphasis toward avoiding serious disruption of operations. This points to working remotely as a key component of all contingency plans, enabled by a whole host of digital tools of virtually every description, from online meetings and e-mail coverage to mobile collaboration applications and virtual event platforms.
Of course, when you have Big Data, you also have to think about large capacities for storing and processing. That’s where cloud computing comes in. The cloud allows organizations to ingest, process, analyze, and share data in a scalable, cost-efficient, interoperable manner. With focus and commitment, a functional cloud infrastructure can be implemented in 90 days. Without the cloud, storing and managing this amount of data would be cost-prohibitive, and an on-premise infrastructure could take years instead of months to implement. An on-premise approach will also require expensive servers and space to house them, which most organizations don’t have or can’t afford. Also, most healthcare providers, payers and managed care organizations may not have the expert resources to make decisions on where the cloud and cloud-native technologies fit into their overall data architecture.
Gray Matter Analytics is prepared for a range of potential scenarios that could arise as a result of the rapidly changing circumstances. Our leadership and response teams are staying up to date on the latest information from the government, public health officials and experts in various industries, so we can help our clients adopt best practices for business continuity and mitigation of losses. Please do not hesitate to contact us if you need assistance addressing the multitude of challenges related to the pandemic. Above all, we wish you and your families good health and safety from harm.
Sincerely,
The Gray Matter Analytics Team