Big data has big potential in the healthcare industry – from helping fight flu epidemics to managing chronic illnesses and preventing disease epidemics. But there are several obstacles that have to be overcome before reaching such advancements.
A new report commissioned by the Institute for Health Technology Transformation (iHT2) makes several recommendations for leveraging big data, including the implementation of a carefully structured framework for enterprise-wide data governance, and the fostering of transparency and competition among healthcare organizations. The report also highlights the symbiotic relationship between big data and healthcare.
In one example, the report points to a recent partnership between IBM and the University of Ontario to develop monitoring software for newborn babies that allows medical staff to predict the likelihood of nosocomial infections 24 hours before any symptoms appear.
“Going forward big data technologies and techniques are expected to drive decision making at the individual patient, group and population levels,” the report said. “One of the goals of healthcare transformation is to garner the ability to personalize care for an individual patient. big data is poised to make a significant contribution toward that goal in the coming years.”
While it’s becoming clear that the healthcare industry has the ability to leverage big data, many challenges exist such as knowing where to look for data that can provide the kind of insight that will prove valuable to patients.
The report identifies five kinds of data where medical professionals can garner insights from – data from the Web and social media; machine-to-machine data, such as from meters, sensors and so on; biometric data like genetics, retinal scans, X-rays, blood pressure readings and fingerprints; transaction data from medical billing records; and human-generated data from medical records, e-mails and physician notes.
As the report summarizes, the healthcare industry is in the early stages of leveraging big data for business and there is no “one-size-fits-all” system – individual strategies must take into consideration cultural, technological and other types of variables.
“It must be emphasized that the healthcare industry remains well within its infancy of leveraging big data for business and clinical use,” the report said. “Although there have been some successes, many are unproven at the outcome level and much work remains to determine whether those strategies and systems that work best at one facility can work equally well at another.”
Edited by
Brooke Neuman
