Fantastic Voyage: the Springbuk User Analytic Journey

In this blog, Nicole Belles, Vice President of Product, takes you on a journey through the 3 different paths the Springbuk platforms offers to bring you from route to resolution.

Fantastic Voyage: the Springbuk User Analytic Journey

“Come along and ride on a fantastic [Springbuk] voyage! Springbuk is the captain of this vessel and we want to take you on a cruise…” 

Before we begin our analytic journey, let’s review the decks of our Springbuk ship:

  • Below Deck: data management and governance, analytic enrichment, and operations provide confidence that your analytic journey is supported by accurate and extremely timely data – 99.75% of our clients have their data updated within 48 hours of receipt.
  • Promenade: on-demand, self-service analytics where you easily navigate through visualizations and actionable information in our interactive and easily drillable stories.
  • The Bridge: Springbuk predictive analytics captain the ship and provide early detection related to risk mitigation, condition management, and cost containment. Gather and assess the system-generated Springbuk Insights that you can act on today. 

Similarly to why some vacationers on a cruise disembark for every excursion while others lounge by the pool the entire voyage, we know there are different types of healthcare data and analytic users. We’ve built our product to be flexible with each user’s individual needs. 

Each user has their own path for their journey, and we broadly characterize these paths and users as follows:

Path 1: Interactive Stories

Let’s start with the typical business user. We live in a world of almost limitless data but very little time. A recent study noted that 85% of us are stressed at work, often from too many tasks. Business users today need immediate access to actionable information. For instance, many of our employer clients are getting nervous by all the recent headlines related to GLP-1 drugs, including Ozempic, Wegovy, and the combination drug Mounjaro, and need information on how these trends may impact their population health and cost trends. 

Healthcare Industry Publication Headlines
Industry Publication Headlines

Glucagon-like peptide-1 (GLP-1) agonists are a class of drugs originally used in the treatment of type 2 diabetes. In addition, some of these drugs have been FDA-approved as treatments for obesity or can be prescribed to overweight individuals with comorbidities. Two GLP-1 agonists, Saxenda and Wegovy, are now approved for weight loss, but there is a growing trend to use others like Ozempic off-label for this purpose. Springbuk business users can get fast facts through Springbuk Insights, our interactive dashboards, and on-demand story library to help formulate proactive strategies:

  • First, the Springbuk proprietary event prediction algorithm readily identifies members who have or are at risk of developing type 2 diabetes. 
Springbuk Insight Card - Forecast: Event Prediction
  • Next, business users can quickly profile members who have diabetes and obesity to analyze their healthcare experience for all comorbidities as well as drill into specific diabetic and obesity episodes to understand medical and drug costs and utilization drugs for those conditions. 
  • Users can easily review pharmacy channel drugs for members with diabetes and obesity by therapeutic class. By drilling into the therapeutic class of antihyperglycemics, users can analyze the GLP-1 drugs.
Springbuk Conditions Group Page
Example of Springbuk Conditions Group Page
Springuk - Service Classification Spend Page
Example of Springbuk Service Classification Spend - Diabetes
Image of Springbuk's Therapeutic Classes Report
Example of Springbuk's Therapeutic Classes Report
Image of Springbuk's Anti-hyperglycemic Report
Example of Springbuk's Anti-hyperglycemic Report
  • The Springbuk on-demand story library contains condition-specific profiles for diabetes and obesity. These profiles allow for deeper dives into the healthcare experience for members with these conditions to understand what was done and why it was done. 
  • Users can analyze co-morbidities, pharmacy utilization, medical utilization, gaps in care, care efficiencies, and cost mitigation opportunities. 

Path 2: Interactive Exploration

For end users who have a bit more time for investigation and want to satisfy a particular data curiosity, they can build their own custom stories using Springbuk’s intuitive Report Builder capabilities. 

  • To start, users can easily create a cohort of members, Springbuk refers to this as a ‘focus population,’ who are taking Ozempic. 
  • Next, the user can simply drag and drop dashboards and apply additional filters to scrutinize the experience of these members.
Image of Springbuk Reports
Example of Springbuk Reports

Users can also perform further custom exploration in Advanced Reports. Here the user can scrutinize GLP-1 drug utilization and cost trends in their population or further drill into analytic enrichments, like episode treatment groups and Springbuk service type classifications to understand the total cost of care for diabetes and obesity.

Path 3: Interactive Exports

We have some end users who are seasoned data explorers. These users often have very specific business questions or populations of interest that they need to research. Other times, they want quick access to data extracts for exploratory analytics. Springbuk provides on-demand export of data summaries, including a rolling financial summary, as well as allows the user to design meaningful extract criteria and export using Advanced Reports. 

Financial Summary from Springbuk
Example Rolling Financial Summary from Springbuk

One particular use case that Springbuk clients often note is their need to reconcile the results they receive from multiple vendors. Often there can be overlap in the populations being managed by multiple vendors, and analysts want to dig deep into their data to analyze the candidates for these programs, those enrolled in these programs, and those who have chosen to opt-out. In Advanced Reports, Springbuk provides access to all data sources, enrichment algorithms, predictive models, and benchmarking data to support interactive and intuitive drag-and-drop analysis. 

Springbuk allows seasoned explorers to analyze their data fast and easily pivot a different route if they find something unexpected. 

Find the Right Path to Your Data Destination

At Springbuk, we understand the essential building blocks of a successful healthcare data and analytics platform. It all starts with a firm understanding of our clients’ analytic needs and what is most important to them. Building on our strong foundation of data management, analytic enrichment, and robust predictive models, we deliver self-service analytics that cater to the needs of every user. We do this by meeting users at their desired port on their analytic journey

With Springbuk, you can just “slide, glide slippity-slide. Just forget about your trouble and your 9 to 5. Come along and ride on a [Springbuk] fantastic voyage.” 

Which path will you take?

1 “Fantastic Voyage”, Song and lyrics by Lakeside
2“40+ WORRISOME WORKPLACE STRESS STATISTICS [2022]: FACTS, CAUSES, AND TRENDS”, The American Institute of Stress, 2022
3Glucagon-like Peptide-1 Agonists, National Library of Medicine, 2023. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK551568/

About the Author

Nicole Belles has over 20 years of experience in the creation and delivery of healthcare data and analytic solutions. Throughout her career, she has been using data and analytics to address the strategic business needs of all stakeholders in the healthcare ecosystem, including health plans, employers, pharmacy benefit managers and providers. She has worked in multiple disciplines, including consulting and practice leadership, methodologies and predictive analytics, and product management.

Nicole joined Springbuk in the summer of 2021 to lead the Product team, where she fosters the product vision and strategy, aligning with the Springbuk strategic vision, to drive sustained value to our clients.