When we think about the future, we might imagine flying cars, superior technology and the potential to cure all diseases, extend our lifespan and improve the general health of world’s population. These hopes are more or less realistic, but this is so in lare part thanks to the advancement of big data and the health technology industry. Big data specifically provides an enormous volume of information which helps healthcare providers analyze data and develop some of the most significant progressions in the HealthTech industry. To help highlight the impact that big data has had and will continue to have, let’s take a look at 4 essential ways that big data impacts the HealthTech industry.
Big data has a significant role in programming machine learning and directly assisting in machines learning themselves to help identify disease and uncover potential treatment options.
Although early in development, machine learning technology has already made significant improvements in patient treatment. One specific example of is Enlitic Company’s lung nodule detector which can achieve positive predictive values at a rate 50% higher than a radiologist. At the moment, the company is testing clinical application for various medical conditions across CT, X-RAY and MRI scans with hopes of getting a much more thorough diagnosis in less time.
Still, successful application of machine learning cannot rely only on cramming collected amounts of Big Data into algorithms and hoping for the best result; it requires selection of large and highly targeted data sets which becomes a must-have skill for practitioners at this point.
Whether it’s keeping track of patient prescriptions or maintaining accurate health records across multiple health practices, communication and transparency between patients and doctors has, at times, been fuzzy.
Fortunately, Big data can solve this issue by automating the communication and transparency between both patients, healthcare providers and researchers. Much of this improvement has been the result of implementing Electronic Health Records (EHR), which have been adopted by nine out of every 10 US physicians.
