The Healthcare industry plays an important role, not just in the lives of people but in the economies of countries around the world as well. Because of advancements in healthcare, people are living lives that are longer and healthier lives. In fact, due to this children are able to attend schools on a regular basis and therefore gain a good education for themselves. This has also resulted in new mothers being able to take care of themselves, thereby reducing maternal mortality by nearly half, over the past two decades.

It goes without saying that health is rooted in the daily lives of human beings. It is in many ways connected to a lot of things like having access to basic amenities like food, water and other such necessities. For instance, if children have to travel thousands of miles to fetch water or become ill due to lack of immunisation resources, it will affect their health and not be able to gain education.

In addition, if mothers who have just given birth dies, more often than not, it is followed by the death of their children, If the men in the family become sick, they are not able to provide livelihood and sustenance to their families. Good health is therefore a prime element for the betterment and growth of family, which is the building block of societies and countries around the world. That is why governments of all countries across the globe are always striving to eradicate barriers to health, so that individuals can focus on things that really matter including education, livelihood, building a good home and secure future along with making use of all opportunities to realise their true potential and capabilities.

Today health plays a important role, not just within a country but also in the case of a global scenario. With business and brands expanding at a raid pace, globalisation is one of the current realities in the world today. in short, the world is today a global village. While this may spell good news for the grow and advancements of economies on one hand, on the other hand this has allowed infections even those resistant to common antibiotics to spread across the world in less than 72 hours. Global health and well being is therefore a major concern for government and economies around the world. And this is something that the entire world has to come together to solve and is not the sole responsibility of a single country or governance.

In the last decade or so, Big Data with its immense growth potential and opportunities for development, has swept the entire world. This is not surprisingly given the fact that immense amount of data sets are produced by brands, companies, organisations, government institutions, educational places and even individuals on a daily basis.

In 2012 alone, almost2.5 quintillion terabytes of data were created daily and according to reports, the amount of data that the world sees in two days is more than the amount that was created in the year 2013. In close to a decade, the amount of data generated around the globe that grown by millions and trillion.  While many sectors like IT and manufacturing, have successfully employed Big Data tactics and techniques to get ahead of their competition, the Healthcare Industry still has a long way to go and is still in its infancy and growing years.

Many providers and investors are keen on helping the healthcare industry to expand with the use of their analytical capabilities, this sector still has a long way to go, mainly due to the fact that the healthcare industry is extremely dynamic in nature and evolving in a rapid manner, every single second. That being said, the integration of healthcare and Big Data can forever change the manner in which we view health and this is a very good sign for the days to come. Here are some main elements that are important in case, the healthcare industry has to realise its growth potential in the field of Big data analytics.

Integrating data and making it uniform across all challenges will be a big challenge and foremost challenge: Brands and companies including political campaigners have been successful in using various data sources in order to acquire information and details about the lives of their customers, clients and citizens. This in turn have helped them to create and implement new strategies that are effective, engaging and creative. In a similar manner by linking and leveraging data about the healthcare, has the potential to help overall health standards by identifying effective treatment methods for patients.

One of the biggest challenge in achieving this is the lack of standardisation that exist in the healthcare industry. This is because there is a lot of data that exists in the medical field that is available in many different forms and types. Some of them include a doctor’s notes within medical record, insurance claims, images from scans of patients, social media conversations related to health and information from devices that include wearables and other similar devices.

Besides this, the community of data collectors is equally unique and varied, making the process of integration extremely challenging and difficult. With so many people like providers, payers, employers, disease management companies, wellness facilities, personalised genetic testing companies, coupled with social media are all in some way or other collecting information about health of patients. Add to that, patients themselves are a source of a lot of information as well, making the process a step more difficult and demanding.

As this task requires immense coordination and management, it cannot be the exclusive responsibility for a single organisation. It would require immense co-operation and top level management from both the private and public sector. In line with this, the national Institutes of Health introduced a Big Data to Knowledge Initiate that is aimed at helping the biomedical research team to access, manage and utilise big Data in a bigger and better manner. By bring together various elements of the healthcare sector, including academic institution, health care systems, life science companies and advocacy organisation, integration of data might soon become a reality for various countries and economies very soon.

Create new forms of data that can help to solve the biggest medical issues and concerns in the world: One of the initial benefits of Big Data was that it was used to generate important and valuable insights that would in turn would help companies to implement successful campaigns and solutions that were capable of addressing big challenges and reach goals in an effective fashion. By integrating data and deriving valuable insights from them, the healthcare industry can provide patients with a lot of care and information, thereby ensuring better recovery and well being.

In addition, they can also help healthcare professionals to predict situations in a better manner and intervene in important and critical situations, saving lives in a effective manner. These predictions in turn can help the sector to improve the quality of care provided to patients and improve facilities in areas that include readmissions, treatment optimisation and identifying worsening health states at a n early stage among other things.

Another extremely important area is a focus to make new knowledge methods viable and constructive. One of the reasons why healthcare is behind many other industries is because it has failed to utilise new methods of gaining important and valuable information. The retail industry has effectively used Big Data analytics to gain valuable insights, thereby addressing the concerns and demands of the customers, clients and stakeholders in a profitable manner. In this regard, the healthcare sector has a long way to go to reach the same stage.

Hospitals are now waking up to the use of Big Data and are effectively making use of techniques like graph analytics through which they can analyse the relationships between complex variables that include results of labs, interaction of nurses, history of patient’s family, diagnosis and patient survey to effectively notice and identify patients who are at a risk of lapsing into serious conditions. With this use of this knowledge and by recognising patterns in the patients, hospitals can effectively treat a patient before they become worse and save resources, both in terms of medical care and time.

Another area where Big Data can help the healthcare industry is through the use of natural language processing and artificial intelligence methods. Though currently they are only helpful in creating unstructured text data that are found in doctor’s notes, medical notes and social media, they have the potential to perform even more complex functions and duties.

For example the Mayo Clinic in collaboration with IBM cognitive computer called Watson, clinical trails are being analysed for patients that best suit the situations. As artificial intelligence in computers and desktops become a big reality, hospitals have immense potential to learn more and more about disease, especially in those people who suffer from rare diseases. This will eventually be a big leap for the healthcare industry in the coming years.

The final hurdle lies in translating all the insights gained into practise: Standardisation of data collection methods and using analytical methods to gain insights from them are no doubt important but the final and most hurdle challenge will eventually be the practical application of all this data. This is because healthcare is not like other industry which is solely based on profits but an important aspect of it is the well being and welfare of all the patients.

Unless that is achieved, healthcare industry cannot progress in the right direction. That is why practical application of these insights pose a unique challenge to almost every person that is in any way involved with the healthcare industry. From doctors to patients to policy makers, it is important that they are engaged at every step on how Big Data can help make the recovery process better, faster and smoother.

Until and unless every part of the research team has a clear idea on how to translate the  required knowledge into practise, the entire endeavour might prove to be a futile effort. Insights from Big Data have the capacity to impact healthcare in diverse manner. From evidence of safety and effectiveness of treatments across the board to diagnosing, treating and delivering exceptional care, Big Data can make healthcare a big and better asset to all the companies and individuals associated with it.

Adopting Big Data will make the future of healthcare better and more secure than any other method or medium

After understanding the need to adopt Big Data, healthcare can go a long way in using the data to create better care for patients and conduct research that can save the lives of countless people. Today, people across the world are suffering from a lot of chronic conditions, and in such cases care and rehabilitation can become an expensive procedure. Big Data can help to address this concern as with time the techniques and data used within the healthcare industry can become cost-effective, thereby enabling people across the population to avail better healthcare facilities.

The healthcare industry today stands on the verge of great change and advancement. None of the above insights and advancements will be possible without a continued focus on developing Big Data techniques that can be used specifically by the healthcare sector. By developing innovative strategies and tools, the healthcare industry will have to bring together financial, clinical and socioeconomic elements, so that they can create better methods to cure and transform the lives of patients around the world.

In summary, better and good level of healthcare is key to human wellbeing and happiness. It has direct effects on the economic and societal progression as well as a healthy population automatically results in happier and more productive lives. And Big Data has the potential to help countries around the world to realise this goal in an effective fashion. The healthcare industry is a big field and by continuously investing better methods and techniques, this industry can definitely reach new levels of growth, thereby helping society to be healthier, stronger and fitter.

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