Big Data is making waves in almost every industry. On top of the list of crucial industries that Big Data analytics and intelligence could transform is Healthcare. According to a recent study by MeriTalk —The Big Data cure, Big Data will present many changes to the health care industry that will improve key areas such as: trial safety, disease surveillance, prescribed treatment and patient outcomes.
What is Big Data?
Big Data as defined in the MeriTalk Research paper, is “The voluminous amount of unstructured and semi-structured data an organization creates – data that would take too much time and cost too much money to load into a relational database for analysis.”
How Big Data Will Transform Health Care
New technology aimed at finding ways to make big data analytics a reality is said to transform federal patient health care in the upcoming years. Over 63% of respondents believe that Big Data will help track and manage population health care more efficiently; 60% say Big Data analytics will enhance the ability to deliver preventive care.
While a majority of the federal representatives surveyed seemed to see the value in Big Data analytics, agency preparation, on the other hand, leaves much to be desired. Only one in five of the respondents believe that their agencies are very prepared to work with Big Data. Just 34% have invested in IT solutions to help optimize data processing. Electronic Health Records (EHR), Health Information Exchange (HIE), Telehealth, mhealth and Machine-to-Machine (M2M) are all emerging areas that can help further federal health care with Big Data.
Recommendations for Preparing for Big Data in the Health Care Industry:
- Enhance IT infrastructure, analytics and data security
- Educate leaders and IT professionals on how to convert Big Data information to actionable insights
- Utilize emerging technologies like mHealth and M2M.