Big Data in Healthcare
What is Big Data?
‘Data is the new Oil’
Everyone must be aware and have heard about this quote and the concept. Data refers to the collection of numbers, texts, audio, videos, images, etc generated from numerous sources, including sensors, surveys, transactions, social media posts, scientific experiments, or observations. It serves as a representation of real-world phenomena, events, or attributes.
Big Data as the name suggest represents a too large amount of dataset that is complex to be analyzed using traditional methods, so new technologies are needed to handle it effectively. Although big data doesn’t equate to any specific volume of data, big data deployments often involve terabytes, petabytes, and even exabytes of data created and collected over time.
Why Big Data?
Big data provides access to vast amounts of information, giving more robust and valuable insights, patterns, and correlations that may not be apparent with smaller datasets. These insights can lead to improved decision-making, innovation, and problem-solving.
Application of Big Data in Healthcare
Big data in healthcare can be broadly categorized into three domains :
Clinical Care:
Clinical care applications such as Real-time patient monitoring, Telemedicine can be improved by continuously investigating and analyzing large datasets from telemedicine platforms, virtual care solutions, remote consultation tools, data transmission and analysis, wearable devices, and IoT sensors. By analyzing datasets from Genomic data platforms, clinical genomics databases, pharmacogenomics databases, and personalized treatment algorithms Precision medicine could enable better care. Computer-based Clinical Decision Support Systems (CDSS) could assist healthcare professionals in taking better decisions by providing relevant information gathered from CDSS platforms, and knowledge bases.
Management:
Big data technology in healthcare management could transform the way healthcare organizations operate and deliver care. Healthcare services such as Population health management, quality improvement, fraud detection(Healthcare claims, Insurance, etc), resource allocation, and supply chain management will be able to provide better and improved quality service by leveraging large amount of data.
Research :
Researchers can use big data to uncover patterns, trends, and correlations that were previously difficult to detect. It assists genomics research, precision medicine, and drug discovery by analyzing vast amounts of genetic and molecular data. Big data technology also supports clinical trials by streamlining participant recruitment, data collection, and analysis. It allows researchers to explore real-world evidence, electronic health records, and patient-reported outcomes to gain insights into disease progression and treatment effectiveness. Big data analytics facilitates epidemiological studies, health monitoring, and disease surveillance to track population health trends. It accelerates research by providing researchers with access to collaborative platforms, data repositories, and computational resources.
The use of big data in healthcare is still in its early stages, but it has the potential to revolutionize the way we deliver care. As the technology continues to evolve, we can expect to see even more innovative ways to use big data to improve patient care.
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