Prospects and Challenges of Population Health with Online and other Big Data in Africa: Understanding the Link to Improving Healthcare Service Delivery

Abstract

Big data analytics offers promises to many health care service challenges and can provide answers to many population health issues. Big data is having a positive impact in almost every sphere of life in more advanced world while developing countries are striving to meet up. Even though healthcare systems in the developed world are recording some breakthroughs due to the application of big data, it is important to research the impact of big data in developing regions of the world, such as Africa and identify its peculiar needs. The purpose of this review was to summarize the challenges faced by big data analytics and the prospects that big data opens in health care services in Africa. The systematic review examined the key research questions to address whether big data applications can improve healthcare service delivery in Africa especially during epidemics or health crises and through the population health system. The paper examined prospects and challenges that are associated with the use of big data and healthcare service in relation to population health needs through influencing factors. In this study, literatures are reviewed to present cases of big data applications in healthcare in Africa and to understand the prospect and challenges of such applications to population health.

A Case Study for a Big Data and Machine Learning Platform to Improve Medical Decision Support in Population Health Management

“…For the neural network approach to predict early neonatal sepsis, Table 13 shows the confusion matrix with the classification results of actual class label vs. the predicted ones, including the true positive value (49), true negative value (95), false negative (12), and false positive value (10). The classification report in Table 14 shows the precision and sensitivity.…”

Association between patient-provider communication and withholding information due to privacy concerns among women in the United States: an analysis of the 2011 to 2018 Health Information National Trends Survey

“…For example, women with Medicaid, uninsured, and other HMO-based care have disparate care, including poor PPC, compared to those who are privately insured or through an employer [ 33 , 40 – 42 ]. Further, despite the substantial benefits of social media on health delivery, serious privacy, and confidentiality concerns can negatively affect women’s health [ 43 , 44 ]. Although this study did not measure how external factors moderate PPC and women’s privacy concerns, it is evident that there is a need for structural strategies to promote women’s health.…”