UPDATED 16:00 EDT / OCTOBER 09 2013

5 Ways Big Data Can Cure Healthcare

Big Data encompasses much of our lives, whether you are aware of it or not.  It’s there when you use social sites like Facebook and Twitter, the enterprise is using it to better understand the whims of consumers, and even in healthcare, Big Data now plays a vital role.

With the use of Big Data and analytics, xMatters, a communications platform responsible for alert management, created an infographic detailing how communication between patients and healthcare providers is crucial.

According to the infographic (below), over 85 percent of patients are comfortable with communicating with their physicians over email, and 81 percent believes that communication plays a huge role in determining whether a patient lives or dies.

Miscommunication can lead to medical errors, or worse, death. Sixty-five percent of 2,034 communications breakdown result in medical errors, while 70 percent end in death.  A physician’s failure to communicate has an 80 percent chance of resulting in malpractice.

If Big Data can be used to determine what’s wrong in the healthcare system, surely it can be used to fix it as well, right?

5 Ways Healthcare Can Be Better with Big Data

 

  • Crowdsourcing for a cure

Italian robotic engineer and open-source artists Salvatore Iaconesi was diagnosed with a deadly form of brain cancer, and the only option given to him was a high risk brain surgery with limited chances of success.  Refusing to accept that, he created Open Source Cure, a website where he reformatted all his medical records, published them on the site, and ask the opinion of as many experts he could find.  Anyone can go to the site and share “cure, create a video, an artwork, a map, a text, a poem, a game, or try to find a solution for my health problem.”

Iaconesi believes that with this method, amassing the knowledge of anyone who is willing to give his case a look will eventually find him a cure.  The site has gained so much attention that the Italian government is now considering ways to make it easier for others to post their medical records online in the hope of finding a cure, or help get funding for treatment.

  • Quality Databases

Pathologists today are relying increasingly on digital images scanned from patient slides to conduct their research.  The images need to be of utmost quality with the highest possible resolution.  As this becomes a global standard, a central storage solution for these images is becoming a priority for pathology labs.

To answer this call, Ventana Medical Systems, Inc. (Ventana), a member of the Roche Group, recently announced that it has partnered with EMC Corporation (EMC) to offer a highly scalable and flexible solution to store and archive medical images.  The agreement creates a turnkey scanning and storage solution for labs of all shapes and sizes.

  • More useful information

With Big Data, hospitals will be able to determine the factors affecting a patient’s stay in the hospital.  With the use of Big Data it was discovered that in-hospital patients are prone to prolonged stays due to nosocomial, or hospital-acquired infections.

It was also determined that the government chooses to treat chronic diseases over long term, such as cancer, diabetes, heart disease and mental disorders, even if it can be easily prevented or managed.

  • Apps for life

For healthcare professionals to deliver the best possible care plan, they need the input of the patients themselves. Plus, patients are more likely to stick with their care plan if they have a say in it.

Mobile apps like Ginger.io can be used to help patients and healthcare providers communicate with one another, as well as for the healthcare provider to deliver assistance even if not asked by the patient.  Ginger.io uses Big Data to deliver real-time self-report and sensor information from patients to healthcare providers.

There are also other apps that help consumers the the best medical treatment like Catlight Health, MyDrugCosts, Symcat and iBlueButton.  Catlight and MyDrugCost help you in the area of looking for the best treatment at the lowest price, Symcat is a self-diagnosis website for those people who are too shy to tell doctors how they are feeling, and iBluButton makes your medical record available anytime you need it.

  • Predictive analytics

Big Data with predictive analytics could help in cause of finding the best treatment for ailments.  In a new study on tamoxifen therapy using Big Data, it was determined that patients given a one-year regimen of the drug were 56 percent less likely to see a recurrence of breast cancer compared to those patients on the current recommendation of just five years.

Predictive analytics was also used to determine that women taking contraceptives with an  ingredient called drospirenone are 77 percent  more likely to suffer blood clots than women using different formulas.

These are just some of the ways Big Data is transforming healthcare, and we can expect more to come as the focus on Big Data exponentially increases across all industries, particularly those we trust with our lives.

Checkout everything Healthy Big Data on our Springpad collection!

 


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