Big Data and Healthcare : A match made in heaven!

1. Big Data and Healthcare; a match made in heaven! Big Data and Healthcare; a match made in heaven! With advances in Nano-scale device engineering, sensors are being embedded in almost everything you encounter on a daily basis; from your cellphones and tablets, to even you’re weighing scale at home. These sensors collect a staggeringly huge amount of data. Along with other traditional forms of data like images and forms, they form what is popularly known as ‘Big data’. Big Data has taken almost every industry by storm, especially the healthcare industry. The vast amount of data generated and collected in healthcare from insurance claims to physician’s notes, Patient medical records, images from patient scans, information from monitoring devices, even conversations about health on social media provide useful information about an individual’s health. Data from the healthcare industry alone reached 150 Exabytes in 2011, and will soon record data in Yottabytes (1024 gigabytes)[1]. It was only a matter of time before the healthcare industry made Big Data one of the largest weapons in their arsenal. Big Data is currently being used to predict epidemics, cure diseases, provide rapid treatments, and avoid preventable deaths. Records of the patient’s blood pressure, sugar levels, calorie count etc. can easily be maintained using apps or gadgets. Treatments backed by results obtained from mining this data could reduce US healthcare costs by $300 - $450 billion, as per the report by McKinsey & Company on “The Big Data Revolution in Healthcare”for the Center for US Health System Reform, Business Technology Office. Access to huge, ever growing databases of information about healthcare will allow problems to be spotted before they occur, and remedies – either medicinal or educational – to be prepared in advance. Preventive measures can thus be taken at very nascent stages.

2. For instance, researchers can mine the data from patient logs to see what treatments are most effective for particular conditions, identify the effects of a drug, and gain other important information which may be of help to future patients and doctors equally for the prevention or treatment of a disease. This increasing reliance on Big Data in the healthcare industry is a promising sign. Doctors who predominantly make diagnoses based on their judgement, can back their conclusions or entirely base their diagnoses on evidence gathered from clinical data and therefore suggest the best possible mode of treatment. Integrating Big Data solutions into the healthcare framework is a must for anyone aspiring to provide top-notch treatment to their patients, with healthcare being an industry where you just cannot be careful enough, wouldn’t you agree? With more than 10 years of experience and understanding of Big Data Solutions and providing Healthcare IT services, our unique portfolio makes RigelNetworks the obvious choice to provide you the edge in this promising field. [1] Transforming Health Care through Big Data Strategies for leveraging big data in the health care industry; 2013. http://ihealthtran.com/ wordpress/2013/03/iht%C2%B2-releases-big-data- research-reportdownload-today/.