A pointer to the (US) future from the (UK’s) Emma Byrne in Forbes; four developments which will lower cost of care in the near future are big data accessible in patient data warehouses, used in personalized/predictive medicine, wellness maintenance and just-in-time medicine. No cautionary notes here about data breaches, which affect an average of 2,700 records for an average price of $2.4 million, but savings of 10 percent (or $900 per person) isn’t hay either. Scientists Save Healthcare (But They’re Not From Med School)
Update 30 April: If you are one of the many who wonder what Big Data really means, versus terminology slung like hash, endless conferences, the word ‘Hadoop’ and that worried look on your HIT department head’s face, John Loonsk, MD helps to define it in language even this Editor can understand. Start with “Specifically, big data tools facilitate pulling together great amounts of available data to support an objective whether those data were recorded specifically and narrowly for that objective or not.” Whew. Policy and implementation challenges to achieving big data outcomes (part 1) HealthcareITNews
Big Data when wayward a Big Problem: 763,000 patients at Adventist Health System’s Florida Hospital Celebration Health ER (ED) over nearly three years had their records sold by one employee with access–and the inside job continued even after he was fired. Big Lawsuit follows. iHealthBeat
More on Big Data’s uses in healthcare and what’s being done with it right now, from Sarianne Gruber’s article in HITECH Answers on how analyzing those terabytes of historical patient data are already generating insights on disease, treatment and healthcare delivery. http://www.hitechanswers.net/big-data-for-healthcare/