Big Data in healthcare offers a new direction to the current medical models. Especially when it is accompanied with cloud computing, the efficiency of Big Data amplifies. Thanks to Big Data and its boosted utilization, there seems to be a tremendous increase in profit. It is because of the better business intelligence. However, more profit generation is just not enough, integration of Big Data even leads to better quality of the operations in the healthcare industry.
Cloud computing has made it possible for the healthcare industries to become capable of uploading and using more data. Before the inception of cloud computing technology, the collection and storage of data was restricted to only a few available resources. But, now, data is everywhere, be it the wearables or phones, and with cloud computing set ups it can be gathered and used more than ever. This now helps the practitioners understand the condition of the care seeker in a lot more detailed manner since they have more clarity about the condition, the background, the medical history etc. Also, the ease of collection and availability of data makes it a lot more convenient for the Big Data analysts to dig in the insights which are linked to all the information. This eventually offers a progressive direction to the healthcare industry.
Because of the latest technological advancements, this is the perfect time for the humans to work along with the machines towards the betterment of the many sectors, including the healthcare sector. Now, diagnosis will not entirely rely on the medical skill, but an amalgamation of the consequences of human reasoning as well as deep learning. The estimated spending in the field of healthcare is around $3 trillion a year. Therefore, there is definitely the space for improvement and advancements. We have been listening to this mantra of prevention is better than cure since ages, but this the time to actually practice it with the help of predictive insights and analytics.
How is Big Data helping doctors and adding more value to the healthcare sectors?
Big Data is much more than just a vast chunk of information. In fact, it is used by doctors worldwide to provide better quality of care to their patients. Simply because the vast amount of information, be it about the past medical history of the patient or about the medications, helps the care providers to understand the patient better. Let’s understand this from an example:
Now, we have so many healthcare apps for Asthma or Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD) patients. All these apps are capable of helping both the care seekers and providers in many ways. These apps not only give reminders to the patients to take medicines, but also save a lot of information about their condition like their prescriptions, information related to triggers, medical history etc. When a doctors gets to see all these details, he or she gets a clear direction to offer better treatment. Hence, with the use of data and information, the chances of treatments getting successful become double.
It is true that Big Data does have a positive role to play when it comes to empowering the doctors. However, this data has to be used efficiently, and more importantly carefully to make sure it helps to derive better results. Very soon we might even see the care providers prescribing medicines or giving various medical advices to the care seekers with effective use of Big Data analytics. There are many organizations providing these type of services, such as Nexsoft Systems.
Lately, in the course of many clinical trials, big data is certainly disclosing a lot of surprising and beneficial things. For example, in oncology, healthcare experts are foreseeing the possibility of utilizing population genomics data along with the individual medical history in order to enhance the quality of clinical trials. This is also anticipated to boost the results for the patients.
At the same time, Big Data is also making it quite easy for the experts to create personalized medicine by first identifying the unique genetic makeup. Also, it makes it easy to fight against any epidemics. This is where the Big Data seems to be helping both the doctors and the healthcare experts.
Chinks in the armor?
When it comes to Big Data in the healthcare world, everything is definitely not just positive. Healthcare experts are surely worried about the immense amount of irrelevant information, which can confuse the doctors. Irrelevant information may include things like, duplicate data, data which is created for sampling purposes, data added by error etc. This type of data leads to alert fatigue. At the same time, it generally leads to prominent data being overlooked. Big Data is often considered as just ‘too much’ information by the doctors, which may or may not be useful as per them. Also, this vast amount of information is at times taken into the bad light. As, it might seem to be creating havoc in terms of the data overload.
Though, the perception of Big Data being vast majorly focus on the term “big”. However, this is definitely not enough. At times, healthcare experts even fail to offer credit to the advancements in the present business intelligence solutions, and all such advancements may be overlooked. All of the new age Big Data advancement tools are considered to be creating a lot of noise. However, they help the users to analyze and sift through the high volume data. Evolving what’s more important and making the work smoother, smarter, and safer healthcare as well as care seekers.