Big Data and Health Care

There is a lot of talk around big data, predictive analytics, artificial intelligence, machine learning and so on.  Primarily, this talk is around the field of marketing, or how a business can improve its business, or sell or more things or drive growth etc. etc.  What is a less talked about is the good that big data can bring to the world.  I’m not talking about having more entertaining technology, I’m talking about big data and health care.

There are a few ways that big data has already made an impact in health care.  One is that of medicine and clinical trials.  Huge amounts of data are involved in the testing and development of new medicines. Recently data sharing led to a breakthrough medicine that can potential help curing types of lung cancers.  Another way big data has already been used in health care is in the fight against the spread of epidemics.  Cell phone location tracking data helped track population movement and predict the spread of the Ebola virus. There were then able to target these better.

A way that big data can really help in the health care industry in the future is by coming up with personalized medicine.  It will be able to tailor medicine to a persons genetic makeup.  It will take into consideration a persons dna, lifestyle and environment and then compare it to others to predict illnesses and treatments.