Big data analytics in healthcare: Opportunities and obstacles

Big data analytics are an essential business component deployed by modern healthcare organizations to collaborate and derive business value from disparate data. There are many clinical, financial and administrative opportunities to be had by provider organizations. But there are hurdles to getting there.

Rob McDonald, executive vice president, platform, at Virtru, a data security technology company, talks about the opportunities and obstacles – and the security issues that come along with big data – in his recent HIMSS20 Digital educational session, How to Innovate with Big Data Analytics while Maintaining Security and Privacy.

“We’ve always known this, as we’ve leveraged every possible data source within the healthcare community and the various disciplines within healthcare to generate better outcomes for the patients or the population at large, we know this,” he said.

“But the use of various different healthcare system providers and the contacts and encounters across multiple providers has highlighted the need to be able to access the more aggregate cross-silo data to really generate the value that we know can be generated with this body of data.”

So today there is an expectation, and it is turning out to be true, that big data analytics is growing in healthcare more than any other vertical, he noted. Not just across direct caregiving, he added, but across cost management reduction research and other areas like response to outbreaks, population health management and global epidemiological trends.

“So this is good for us as we try to think about the opportunity that lies ahead of us,” McDonald stated. “This is an opportunity because we are seeing this growth in adoption and support. But we have to be good stewards of this, we have to be sure to instill the trust to gain access to this opportunity and fulfill our missions that we are all embarking on.”

Beyond the opportunities come the obstacles to big data analytics in healthcare.