Big Data in Healthcare

Abstract

Big data (BD) is essentially about gathering information from disparate sources and analyzing it to reveal trends that can directly improve patients' well-being. Healthcare is one of the most promising areas where big data can be applied to make a change. BD is a revolutionary, powerful tool in the healthcare industry; it is now becoming vital in current patient-centric care. This paper briefly provides an introduction to big data analysis in the healthcare sector. Keywords: healthcare, big data, big data analytics I. INTRODUCTION Health plays a crucial role in people's lives. The healthcare industry comprises of nursing homes, telemedicine, charity organizations, and medical equipment. The global healthcare industry is striving to lower the costs while improving the quality of care provided. With the ever-increasing cost for healthcare services and ever-increasing health insurance premiums, the healthcare industry is in need of proactive healthcare management and wellness. As the industry moves from a volume-based to a value-based model, data will play a pivotal role in the transition [1]. Today, data is generated daily by mobile phones, sensors, patients, hospitals, researchers, organizations, pharmacies, medical centers, medical records, commerce, and organizations. Data has always been king, but handling and analyzing huge amount of data is a challenging task. In today's digital society, it is necessary that this data should be digitized. This huge, heterogeneous, and digitized data is known as big data (BD). Big data (BD) has opened up enormous opportunities for a wide range of industries, include the healthcare sector. Its management solutions will provide insightful information, which can help healthcare organizations to made right decisions at right time. II. IMPORTANCE OF BD IN HEALTHCARE "Big Data" is a big all-too-common buzzword these days. The concept refers to massive amount of data generated through digitization of all sorts of information, including health records. It has rapidly made its way into a wide range of industries and it has changed the way we manage and analyze data. It is a major challenge for industries such as defense, transportation, agriculture, and banking. For healthcare industry, it is even more formidable due to the highly sensitive and highly dynamic nature of the data. In healthcare, big data my include data from, but not limited to, electronic health records, mobile applications, genomics, clinical reports, doctor's notes, wearable body sensors, hospital admission notes, pharmacies, insurance companies, medical imaging, laboratories, genomics, ehealth, mhealth, and social media. These include structured (such as from electronic health records (EHRs)), semi-structured (physician-to-patient and patient-to-patient communication through email, social media, and web), and unstructured (such as clinical notes and claims) data [2]. The era of big data has opened up new opportunities in personalized medicine, preventive care, chronic disease management and in telemonitoring and mana...