Data Literacy for Staff in Healthcare and Medical Industry

Abstract

Companies today collect a large amount of data thanks to the advancement in information technology and business process improvement. However, the collected data are often not used effectively. This is due to the lack of understanding about the benefits of data. Therefore, there is a worldwide effort led by OECD to push companies to use data more effectively and efficiently in order to improve business operation. Everyone now knows about the benefit of data, however, companies still feel that they are not making the best use of data they have. This problem is even more severe in healthcare and medical institutions since there are an immense amount of a variety of data that flow into the system every second. In this paper, we show that the staff in healthcare institutions can cope with this problem using the concept of research methodology which most staff do not have since it was not usually offered as a required course in undergraduate level. Research methodology covers all areas of data literacy. We identify that research methodology could only be provided through project-based or interactive learning and it cannot be learnt in a short period of time. From our findings, we also found that work environment greatly affected the ability to apply data literacy concept greatly as low-level staff did not have the opportunity to take part in the business problem establishment process. This discourage staff from learning and using data literacy concept. We also propose that companies should allow staff in different departments to have autonomy to conduct their own research and improvement strategy so that they can fully see the need of data literacy and apply it successfully.