Big Data in the Health Sector

Abstract

Several developments in the healthcare sector, such as escalating healthcare costs, increased need for healthcare coverage, and shifts in provider reimbursement trends, trigger the demand for big data technology. The wide scope and variety of discussed big data applications indicate the promising opportunities of big data technologies to improve overall healthcare delivery. However, in order to realize those applications, one needs to enable seamless access to the various health data sets. As of today, access to health data is only possible in a very constrained and limited manner. In order to improve this situation and for establishing the basis for the widespread implementation of big data applications in the healthcare sector, several technical requirements such as the semantic enrichment of data, data integration and sharing, data privacy and security, as well as data quality, need to be addressed. In terms of market adoption, the big data revolution in the healthcare domain is in a very early stage with the most potential for value creation and business development unclaimed as well as unexplored. Current roadblocks are the established system incentives of the healthcare system, which hinder collaboration and, thus, data sharing and exchange. The trend towards value-based healthcare delivery will foster the collaboration of the stakeholder to enhance the value of the patient’s treatment, and thus will significantly foster the need for big data applications.

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