Towards a Big Data Architectural Framework for Healthcare in Ghana

Abstract

Data is deemed as a gold mine if and only if it is analyzed and utilize. The healthcare system is one of the largest generators of data due to strict adherence to regulatory structure. Unfortunately, Big Data deployment in the healthcare industry has not catch up in Ghana and Africa at large. Big Data in healthcare has enormous benefits including the designing of Predictive models, analyzing disease patterns and tracking disease outbreaks, turning large data into actionable information, Evidence based health delivery through data analysis and Capture and analyze real time data from variety of locations. To achieve above mentioned potentials of Big Data, this thesis has taken a look at the structure of Big Data, which has led to the development of an architectural framework that will fit into the system Ghanaian healthcare system and how the variety of data will be handled and stored. A framework which will serve as a platform for data analytics in the Healthcare industry is also proposed. Finally, we propose a framework which will handle the new data generating devices used by health facilities that is the structured and unstructured data types.

Heterogeneous Analysis of the Nexus between Big Data Analytics and Value Co-Creation: Insight from Selected Service Businesses in Ghana

“…While this is true, most businesses in developing countries like Ghana are yet to fully exploit this to their advantage (Marfo& Boateng, 2015). This is hypothetically down to the unavailability of skilled labor, inadequate financial resources, and managerial inefficiencies (Adjei et al, 2018;Marfo& Boateng, 2015). Therefore, this study attempts to present evidence ofa linkage between big data analytics and value co-creation in Ghanaian businesses.…”

“…Nevertheless, big data analytics per existing literature extrapolates that the quality of the big data team available in a firm positively influences the outcome of the analytics and the quality of the decision process. This outlines one of the major issues inhibiting the use of big data in Ghana (Adjei et al, 2018). The availability of skilled labor in the area of big data analytics and the willingness of firms to commit resources to this agenda continues to limit big data application in the makingof decisions.…”

“…Given the role of businesses in the economy of Ghana and the need to achieve optimum productivity, several cost-cutting innovative avenues are explored constantly by these businesses. However, resource availability, lack of expertise, and managerial inefficiencies inhibit the application of modern techniques like big data analytics (Adjei et al, 2018;Marfo& Boateng, 2015). Although several studies examine the significance of big data in businesses (Ge et al, 2018;Caputo et al, 2017;Uden et al, 2018), studies in Ghana on this issue are scanty.…”