Big Data has fundamentally changed the way we look at the world. In companies, data streams help to optimize manufacturing processes or analyze new market opportunities. In marketing, customer data is the most valuable currency for the marketer. But Big Data also plays a key role in the healthcare industry.
Health analytics has the potential to reduce treatment costs, optimize patient well-being and stop diseases and epidemics before they break out. The healthcare industry is sitting on a huge mountain of data, and with the skilful combination of this information it will be possible to develop strategies that can make Big Data a lifesaver.
Recent surveys predict that by 2022 the Big Data market will be worth $34.27 billion in Healtchare. Every day, new patient data and research results are recorded, which are then fed back into the Data Healthcare process, so by 2022 not only will the market explode, but Big Data Analytics can turn the entire healthcare system upside down. If we include the currently rising market for fitness and health wearables, the forecasts of the analysis applications will become more and more precise and, due to the large amount of data, more and more well-founded.
Data Healthcare – a system looking for structure
In the healthcare industry, real-time data comes together with big data. However, health data is often collected and processed unstructured. If you look alone in a hospital, in the worst case different hospital information systems run within one institution. Different departments, such as radiology, surgery or pharmacy, often collect and process their data individually. Even the existing formats do not follow a fixed definition. Paper, images, texts, figures, videos and much more come together in the health sector, but can only be interpreted and controlled with Big Data Analytics.
In order to prepare for a future full of wearables, AR and VR data and the environment for artificial intelligences in health care, big data systems are needed that are already beginning to structure and interpret healthcare data today. One solution, for example, would be a central system such as an Enterprise Data Warehouse (EDW) that makes the data accessible and usable.
Treat patients with data healthcare better
But not only are processes becoming more dynamic and cost-efficient, Big Data can also be used to treat patients better and more promisingly. The patient data can provide information about the individual patient situation and effectively adjust to him during his stay at the hospital or during his interaction with his physician in order to optimize his experience at the point of care.
By combining all patient data and the corresponding statistical clustering of the information, patient patterns can be identified faster, more cost-effectively and more efficiently. With the help of these patterns, optimized treatment plans are created for all emergencies and treatment cases, which make all processes during medical care more effective. The analysis of patients’ vital functions and the monitoring of care plans also offer the possibility of proactively treating patients in line with their current needs. This is only possible through the analysis of larger data sets with current patient information.
The central problem, however, is that the evaluation of the information requires a high degree of IT, data and professional competence, which has not been available in many health care facilities to date. Nevertheless, the option of a big data-driven healthcare industry should not be ignored. The possibility of establishing cost-effective and optimized treatment and process management from real-time data, patient information and samples is an essential building block for success in the future of the healthcare industry.
