Healthcare may be the next big industry to undergo overhaul via big data and artificial intelligence technologies. Bureaucratic lag and privacy jitters notwithstanding, such progressive tech could revolutionize how doctors and patients diagnose and treat ailments. So are insurgent startups or deep-pocketed legacies best equipped to monetize the new era of medicine?

“Healthcare data is the most complex, fascinating, rich data there is,” said Bharat Rao (pictured), partner and national leader for healthcare and life sciences, data and analytics, at KPMG LLP.

The healthcare category spans a lot of territory included structured and unstructured data, according to Rao. This comprises data on the provider, the payer, life sciences, physicians’ notes, genomics — the list goes on. “The ability to process and transform it is going to change not just healthcare, but change our lives dramatically in the coming years,” he said. 

Rao spoke with Dave Vellante (@dvellante), host of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s mobile livestreaming studio, during the Google Cloud Next event in San Francisco. They discussed how data, AI and machine learning will change healthcare and which vendors are best poised to deliver the technology. (* Disclosure below.) 

Apple has an in; startups could upset with cloud, AI

Several currents are swirling together to make this a pivotal moment for healthcare, according to Rao. For one, the HITECH (Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health) Act in the U.S. has created boatloads of healthcare data. Another is the smorgasbord of advancing tech — cloud, ML and AI, namely, making mincemeat of previously unmanageable data loads. These will spark a shift from “evidence-based” medicine based on clinical trials, etc., to “experience-based” medicine that incorporated individual patients’ full slate of health and lifestyle data, Rao pointed out.

We likely won’t be wearing special devices to capture data. “Today, our smartphones know how much we travel, how much we sleep, how often I’m on the phone,” he said. They might also track the steps we take, our stress level, where we ate lunch, etc. For this reason, a smartphone maker like Apple Inc. might be a shoe-in for the new digitized healthcare market.

“Apple has the device which you walk around with. They potentially have more information about you than anyone else on earth, should they choose,” Rao furthered. On the other hand, the cheap cloud infrastructure with AI and ML services means startups are very much in the race. The new healthcare business could be worth a trillion dollars, Rao concluded. 

Watch the complete video interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s coverage of the Google Cloud Next event. (* Disclosure: Google Cloud sponsored this segment of theCUBE. Neither Google nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: SiliconANGLE