When you're evaluating healthcare technology or working to improve patient outcomes, data is the backbone of every decision you make. From diagnosing conditions to managing workflows, the way you handle data directly impacts how care is delivered.
But data in healthcare isn’t one-size-fits-all.
There are different types, each with its own role—some help track individual patient journeys, others reveal trends across populations, and some expose inefficiencies in your systems. The key is knowing what type of data you’re working with and how to use it effectively.
In this guide, we’ll walk through 10 types of healthcare data that are reshaping patient care. You'll get a clear picture of what each type offers and how it can support smarter choices, better outcomes, and more efficient operations.
When you think of healthcare data, EHRs and EMRs are often the first systems that come to mind—and for good reason. They’re the digital backbone of modern patient care.
But while the two terms are often used interchangeably, they serve very different purposes.
EMRs are the digital version of paper charts used within a single provider’s office. They capture key details like diagnoses, treatment plans, prescriptions, immunization records, and test results, but they stay within that specific clinic or hospital.
EHRs, on the other hand, are built for sharing. They compile data across multiple providers and systems, giving any authorized healthcare professional access to a patient’s complete care history. That means a specialist, pharmacist, or emergency room physician can all see the same up-to-date information, no matter where the patient was originally treated.
For you as a healthcare leader, EHRs offer clear advantages:
That said, interoperability is still a major challenge. Many systems can’t easily talk to each other, leaving data locked in silos. Until this is solved, the full promise of connected, data-driven care remains just out of reach.
If you're looking to improve how your healthcare facility runs day-to-day, administrative data is one of your most powerful tools. It captures everything that happens around patient care—from appointments and billing to staff schedules and resource use.
This type of data is generated during nearly every patient interaction: doctor visits, hospital stays, diagnostic tests, and pharmacy pickups. While it's primarily collected for billing and operational purposes, its value goes far beyond paperwork.
Here’s what administrative data typically includes:
For healthcare executives and operations teams, this data reveals where bottlenecks occur, where resources are over- or under-utilized, and how processes can be optimized. When used well, administrative data can lead to lower operational costs, smoother workflows, and a better experience for both patients and staff.
It’s not just about managing the business side. It’s about making the entire system run smarter.
When you're responsible for managing healthcare costs, improving efficiency, or tracking population health, claims data is one of the most structured and scalable data sources at your disposal. It captures every billable interaction between insured patients and the healthcare system, covering what services were provided, when, by whom, and for how much.
Unlike clinical data, which can vary greatly across systems and formats, claims data is standardized by design. That’s because it’s built for one main purpose: payment. This makes it reliable, consistent, and perfect for large-scale analysis.
Here’s what you’ll typically find in claims data:
Because of its consistency, claims data is often used to track healthcare utilization, measure outcomes, and evaluate cost-effectiveness. On its own, it gives you a bird’s-eye view of healthcare delivery. But when you combine it with clinical, demographic, or social data, it becomes even more valuable.
Here’s how organizations use claims data:
In short, claims data gives you the scale, consistency, and financial clarity needed to manage care delivery more effectively across both individual patients and entire populations.
If you're aiming to improve care for patients with chronic or complex conditions, general health records alone aren’t enough. You need a way to track outcomes over time, across visits, and sometimes across organizations.
That’s exactly what patient and disease registries are designed for.
These registries are structured databases focusing on a particular diagnosis, procedure, or patient population. They go beyond capturing a single moment in care. Instead, they help you understand the full picture: how a patient responds to treatment over months or years, what complications arise, and how your care compares to broader trends.
Depending on your setup, registries can range from a simple spreadsheet used by a local clinic to a highly sophisticated online database shared across multiple hospitals and providers.
Here’s what they usually contain:
Registries are already being used in large-scale national and global efforts. For example:
But registries are more than just data collection systems. Many act as decision support tools for your care teams. For instance, if a patient with diabetes hasn’t had their A1C checked in six months, the system can prompt a follow-up.
If someone with a history of breast cancer is due for imaging, the registry can notify the care coordinator. This kind of functionality ensures clinical guidelines are followed and care is proactive, not reactive.
Here’s how this type of data can directly support your organization:
By integrating registries into your operations, you’re not just collecting data—you’re generating insight. You gain the ability to understand what’s working, what’s not, and what adjustments need to happen to truly improve patient care.
When you're trying to understand health trends across a population, not just among those who visit a clinic, health surveys offer a unique advantage. They capture self-reported data directly from individuals, giving you insights that clinical records often miss.
What makes survey data especially valuable is its reach. While EHRs and billing systems only reflect people actively receiving care, health surveys can capture input from those with limited access to healthcare or who avoid it altogether. This helps you see the full picture—not just who gets treated, but who’s being missed.
Most large-scale health surveys focus on five key areas:
Here are a few widely used national survey tools:
When you're trying to make data-informed decisions, this kind of survey information can support several objectives:
By integrating health surveys into your strategy, you gain more than just numbers—you gain perspective. You start to understand not only who your patients are, but how they live, what stands in their way, and how your care can meet them where they are.
If you're evaluating whether to introduce a new treatment, change care protocols, or better manage chronic conditions, clinical trial data gives you the evidence you need to make those decisions with confidence.
These studies are the most rigorous way to assess whether an intervention—whether a drug, device, or care method—actually works and is safe.
Unlike observational data, which reflects what’s already happening in the real world, clinical trials are carefully designed and controlled. That means you get reliable data that shows cause and effect, not just correlations.
You can use clinical trial data to:
Throughout the trial process, researchers collect structured data, including:
You don’t need to wait for journal publications to access this data. Many registries give you direct access to trial summaries and findings, including:
For your organization, clinical trial data offers clear advantages:
When used alongside real-world clinical data, trial results give you a fuller picture of what works, for whom, and under what conditions—helping you raise the standard of care across your entire system.
If you only rely on clinical visits and lab tests to understand a patient’s health, you're missing a major part of the picture.
Patient-generated health data (PGHD) gives you continuous insights into how people live, move, eat, sleep, and manage their conditions, outside of the exam room.
This type of data comes from consumer-facing devices and apps, including:
PGHD includes both raw sensor readings (like heart rate or steps taken) and calculated metrics (like average sleep quality or blood sugar trends). Unlike episodic clinical data, this information is captured in real time, sometimes minute by minute, offering a continuous and personalized view of someone’s health status.
Here’s why PGHD matters:
However, this flood of data also presents challenges. Devices generate massive volumes of information, which raises questions around:
To make the most of PGHD, your organization needs a clear strategy—one that balances data collection with clinical relevance, and technology integration with patient-centered care.
When implemented well, PGHD doesn't just supplement clinical care. It extends it, giving you a richer, more accurate, and more proactive approach to managing health.
Genomic data is quickly becoming one of the most powerful tools in modern healthcare. This type of data contains detailed information about a person’s genome—the complete set of genetic material that drives how their body develops, functions, and responds to disease.
Genomic data includes:
In practical terms, this data fuels a new level of medical understanding. You can use it to:
This is the foundation of precision medicine, where prevention, diagnosis, and treatment are tailored to the individual rather than the average patient. For example, instead of prescribing the standard medication for a condition, you can use genomic data to identify which drug is most likely to work for a particular person, and at what dose.
As sequencing technology becomes more affordable and accessible, you're likely to see genomic data showing up more frequently in electronic health records and clinical workflows. But that growth brings new challenges:
Healthcare organizations that invest early in genomic data infrastructure and expertise are positioning themselves at the forefront of next-generation care.
You're not just treating a condition—you’re understanding why it occurs, how to catch it early, and how to treat it in the most effective way possible.
Administrative records and claims databases offer some of the most expansive data available. These systems track a wide range of patient interactions—doctor visits, procedures, hospital stays, prescriptions, insurance claims, and billing—across multiple care settings.
Unlike data from a single provider or clinic, claims databases aggregate patient information from different sources, giving you a longitudinal view of the entire care journey. This makes it easier to understand not just what happened during one visit, but how patients move through the healthcare system over time.
Administrative data offers several compelling advantages in healthcare analytics:
One key strength of this data is its scale and consistency. Because claims are tied to billing and insurance, they follow standardized coding systems, making them easier to process and compare across organizations.
And since most records are entered during or immediately after a patient encounter, the data tends to be more timely and less affected by memory bias.
That said, administrative records come with limitations you need to account for:
For your organization, this data is essential for:
Used thoughtfully, administrative data helps you manage the business side of healthcare while still keeping sight of patient outcomes. When layered with richer clinical detail, it becomes a powerful foundation for both operational efficiency and better care delivery.
To understand how patients talk about their health outside clinical walls, social media and online communities offer a unique, unfiltered window into the patient experience.
Platforms like Facebook, X (formerly Twitter), Reddit, patient forums, and health-specific networks generate massive amounts of real-time data on how people perceive conditions, treatments, providers, and the healthcare system as a whole.
Unlike structured surveys or formal patient interviews, social media posts reflect how people naturally express their concerns, frustrations, and breakthroughs. This gives your organization access to:
You can use this data to:
However, this type of data also comes with serious limitations:
To responsibly use this data, your organization needs clear protocols for data ethics, analysis, and response. That means:
When handled correctly, social media gives you a valuable complement to clinical and administrative data—helping you design care, communication, and strategy based on how people really live and speak, not just how they respond in surveys or show up in charts.
As you work to turn healthcare data into better care and smarter operations, the challenges are technical and strategic. Managing diverse data types across disconnected systems requires more than just storage solutions.
It demands the right infrastructure, governance, talent, and compliance approach, all working together.
Here are the key challenges your organization needs to address:
One of the most persistent obstacles is getting different systems to communicate effectively. EHRs, billing platforms, patient portals, wearable device feeds—each captures important data, but often in isolation.
When systems can’t share information reliably, it creates silos that slow down care, duplicate effort, and limit the value of your analytics.
To move forward, you need:
Without interoperability, your ability to act on data is always limited by what your systems can "see."
Healthcare data is among the most sensitive and the most regulated. You’re expected to protect patient information under frameworks like HIPAA, GDPR, and various state-specific laws, all while managing it across a growing number of tools and vendors.
Each data type may come with different risks and requirements. For example:
Any breach can lead to massive fines and loss of public trust. That’s why you need:
When your data isn’t clean, standardized, or complete, your insights are only as good as your weakest data point. Duplicate patient records, inconsistent coding, and missing values all chip away at the reliability of your reporting and analytics.
What causes these issues?
You can’t improve what you can’t trust. To fix this, you’ll need:
Healthcare organizations have more data than ever, but many still struggle to turn it into insights. Advanced analytics methods like predictive modeling, machine learning, and real-time alerting require technical skills and infrastructure that aren’t always in place.
The biggest gaps tend to be:
If you want to move from reporting to forecasting, your organization must decide whether to:
With the growth of genomic data, high-resolution imaging, continuous monitoring, and remote devices, the volume of healthcare data is exploding. That volume introduces new demands on storage, processing, and access.
Cloud platforms offer scalability, but not all data belongs there, especially when you factor in compliance, latency, or cost.
You need a flexible infrastructure strategy that balances:
Managing healthcare data isn’t just about storing more—it’s about using it better. And that means solving for access, trust, talent, and scale, all at once.
At Pi Tech, we understand that managing healthcare data is about trust, compliance, clinical realities, and constant change. That’s why our approach goes beyond generic software development.
We build custom solutions designed specifically for the way your healthcare organization actually works.
Here’s how we help you take control of your data, without the usual friction:
Traditional development methods rely on rigid specifications and long documentation cycles that often fall apart when requirements shift, as they often do in healthcare. At Pi Tech, we use our proprietary specless engineering methodology to work more flexibly. Instead of locking you into one plan, we focus on your goals and iterate quickly based on real feedback.
That means:
This approach is especially useful in healthcare environments, where regulations shift, integrations get complex, and frontline users need systems that fit their day-to-day work.
Every developer on your project is a senior-level engineer with proven healthcare expertise. Our team understands not just how to write clean, scalable code, but how that code fits into hospital operations, provider workflows, and patient safety standards.
You’re not stuck explaining the basics of EHRs, HIPAA, or HL7 to generalist developers. Instead, you’re working with people who speak both languages—clinical and technical—and can bridge the gap between your vision and a functioning, secure solution.
We don’t treat compliance as a checkbox at the end of the process. From the first conversation to the final deployment, every decision is made with regulatory frameworks in mind—including HIPAA, FDA, HITRUST, and ISO standards.
You don’t have to worry about:
We design systems that do the right thing—by default—so you can focus on care, not paperwork.
Additionally, our work spans every part of the healthcare data lifecycle:
If your current systems feel disconnected, inflexible, or out of sync with clinical realities, Pi Tech can help you change that. We don’t just develop healthcare software—we build solutions that move you forward, safely and efficiently.
The many types of healthcare data—clinical, administrative, genomic, patient-generated, and beyond—hold immense potential to improve care delivery, reduce costs, and enhance patient outcomes.
But unlocking that value requires the right systems, the right strategy, and the right partner.
To make data truly work for your organization, you need solutions built around your workflows, flexible enough to evolve with your needs, and compliant with the strictest healthcare regulations.
That’s exactly what Pi Tech delivers.
With senior-level talent, deep regulatory expertise, and our flexible specless engineering approach, we help healthcare organizations build data systems that don’t just manage information—they drive results.
Ready to take control of your healthcare data? Contact us today to discuss how Pi Tech can help you build secure, compliant, and innovative healthcare data solutions.
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