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Big Data and health information
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- Big Data and health information
The
origin that is usually quoted for the analysis of big data as a trend
is the intersection between CRM Technologies, that allow to store all
the operational information with respect to a client (marketing,
transactional, administration, after-sales, etc.), and the world of the
social web, which gives rise to a much richer information environment.
This
usually gives big Data's projects a "big Brother" background, in which
companies "stalk" social networks to capture trends, opinions, etc. and
introduce them to their marketing. However, big data is much more than
that: a lot of the data that are processed in this type of projects are
not even personal type or have nothing to do with social networks, but
come from another of the great trends of the time: the development of
sensors for capturing information of all kinds , from environmental to
traffic, through continuous measurements of all types of parameters.
One
of the trends that has caught my attention reviewing projects is the
application of big data to the world of health: hospitals, despite the
increasing sophistication of their systems, often live in what Seth
Godin calls "the pre-digital phase", despite the fact that the
incorporation of analytical intelligence in this sense can be of
critical importance. The medical-hospital environment is increasingly
invaded by machines of all kinds that generate torrents of data about
the patients to whom they are connected. Data which, however, are
usually simply not stored – are used for short-term analysis and
associated with a specific moment – or be printed and collected in a
rudimentary manner in a folder. On a personal level, Google Health, one
of Google's recently closed projects, was trying to provide support for
health information and facilitate it being shared with third parties:
Enter the results of your analyses, your prescriptions, your
medications, etc. in a file and share it with your doctor or with
hospitals, making it easier for them to access your file to include more
information. An idea with possibilities, but whose low level of
adoption did not allow their survival.
It
is estimated that an average patient generates about two gigas of
information, which grow rapidly in the case of certain treatments. What
kind of information are we talking about? Of everything a bit: from
information perfectly tabulated, as in the case of analytical results,
to unstructured data, such as images of all types or readings of varied
parameters. All of it is scannable information, but in very few cases it
is scanned and stored properly. Without a doubt, a perfect field for
the application of techniques of big data, not only for a question of
application to the patient, but also-and with great possibilities-to the
treatment of the information added.
The
first projects are focusing on issues related to hospital savings and
management, where it is possible to carry out an objective economic
impact estimation or a better allocation of resources. But there is no
doubt that there is enormous potential for that which begins to become
increasingly paradoxical that in an environment such as the one we live
is not yet available: the storage of a person's data in such a way that
it allows for a centralized treatment and analysis at the moments that
are really needed.
Where
are we going? I have already heard visions of people talking about
voluntary health monitoring services through non-intrusive sensors that
send real-time data, surely a topic for which there are still a few
years, not so much because of the lack of maturity of the technology and
the possibilities of carrying out a development that economically makes
sense. But for the moment, I'm sure that thinking about applying
technology to this kind of topics allows us to think about the big data
theme with a somewhat different optics.
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