Healthcare Analytics

Healthcare Analytics is an interdisciplinary journal promoting the application of data science, business analytics, information technology, operations research, statistics, simulation, optimization, and mathematical modeling to decision-making and problem-solving in healthcare organizations within the private and public sectors.

The principal objective of Healthcare Analytics is to provide state-of-the-art information for academic researchers, policy-makers, and practitioners concerned with developing new methodologies, tools, and technologies to formulate and solve operational, tactical, and strategic problems in healthcare organizations.

The journal views a healthcare organization as an entity that provides medical services, health-related support, or medical care to individuals or communities. These organizations are structured to deliver a wide range of services to promote, maintain, or restore health. Healthcare organizations can vary in size, scope, and purpose and can be classified into different types based on their function, ownership, and services. A healthcare organization can be a hospital (providing a broad range of medical services, including emergency care, surgeries, inpatient treatment, and specialized care), a clinic (offering outpatient services, preventive care, and treatment for non-emergency conditions), a nursing home (providing long-term care for elderly or disabled individuals who need help with daily activities), a home healthcare agency (offering medical care and assistance to patients in their homes), a public health organization (focusing on population health through disease prevention, health education, and community health initiatives), a health maintenance organization (managing healthcare services through a network of providers with a focus on preventive care), an urgent care center (providing immediate care for non-life-threatening conditions), a rehabilitation center (focusing on helping patients recover from injuries, surgeries, or illnesses), a clinical or hospital laboratory (performing blood tests, pathology, microbiology, and biochemistry analysis), a pharmaceutical or biotech laboratory (developing and testing new drugs and treatments or new medical equipment and devices), a public health laboratory (focusing on disease surveillance, testing for infectious diseases, and managing public health emergencies), an environmental health laboratory (analyzing samples related to environmental factors, such as water, air, and soil quality), or health research centers (such as academic medical centers, national research institutes, government-funded institutions, non-governmental research centers, or private companies or foundations) among others.

Healthcare Analytics is comprised of four Departments:

• The Descriptive Analytics Department handles manuscripts and studies that answer what happened by analyzing historical data and extracting hindsight about the past without explaining why.

• The Diagnostic Analytics Department handles manuscripts and studies that answer why something happened by measuring historical data against other data (i.e., benchmarks) and extracting insight into the present.

• The Predictive Analytics Department handles manuscripts and studies that answer what will happen using descriptive and diagnostic analytics findings to provide foresight for the future.

• The Prescriptive Analytics Department handles manuscripts and studies that answer what to do using descriptive, diagnostic, and predictive analytics findings and prescribe for the future to eliminate a problem or take advantage of a promising trend.

The journal is a source of information for theoretical, empirical, and analytical research and real-world applications and case studies in healthcare analytics and informatics.