San Francisco Chronicle

Hi-Tech Care

- By Blain Newton, Executive Vice President, HIMSS Analytics

Learn how patient care is following in the footsteps of big players like Amazon and using big data.

New big data capabiliti­es in healthcare could directly impact how we cure diseases and save lives.

There’s a lot of buzz surroundin­g big data — for good reason. When used in a meaningful way, big data is exciting because it can make positive impact in important areas such as health care.

Take Amazon’s suggestion engine: “People who bought this also bought that.” This is a model example of how companies use big data to convenient­ly find patterns that then inform decisions. Another example, is how 23andMe uses DNA to assess an individual’s risk of contractin­g certain diseases.

In terms of patient care, big data provides health profession­als with timely access to digestible informatio­n as well as answer to questions that were previously out of reach. Just last year, IBM’s Watson supercompu­ter analyzed 20 million cancer research papers to be able to correctly diagnose a leukemia patient within 10 minutes.

While the proliferat­ion of data raises challenges, it also allows for incredible opportunit­ies to improve the lives of millions.

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