Big Data in Healthcare — Handling with Care [3 Mind-Blowing Case Studies]
Introduction
Big Data and Healthcare could be a match made in heaven. Though Big Data can save you from going to heaven anytime soon(Lol). Curious to know How Big Data can be used in Healthcare and save our lives? Here’s a blog to satisfy your appetite with 3 Amazing Case Studies. Stay Tuned!!
Before Proceeding get yourself acquainted with BIG DATA
The Healthcare Data
There is a data explosion the healthcare industry is currently experiencing. According to Forbes, “The expected digital health tech catering to out of hospital settings will grow by 30% to cross $25 billion markets globally by the end of 2020”. That’s huge though. More recent estimates put the annual growth of medical data alone at 48% each year. While a lot of data is still stored in hard copy form, the current digital revolution is changing this scenario. Big Data will surely change the outlook of the healthcare industry towards its data.
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Impact of Big Data on Healthcare
In the recent few years, Big Data has been the Game Changer in most of the industries. As far as the healthcare and medical sciences industry is concerned Big Data can bring the transformation healthcare industry was waiting for. It can revolutionize the healthcare industry.
According to the Big Data Experts at QUANTZIG (A Global Analytics Solutions Provider), “Big Data and Advanced Analytics may just be the answer to the hardest of Healthcare challenges”.
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BIG DATA IN HEALTHCARE - THE SAVIOUR [Case Studies]
1.HOW BIG DATA SAVED A LIFE
There’s a recent case of a person whose life was saved by the help of Big Data Analytics.
What made it possible? Because he was wearing an Apple iWatch that applies Big Data Analytics.
Let me first tell you what Apple iWatch has to offer apart from notifications from your mobile phone. It tracks your activities throughout the day. Be it the no. of steps you have walked or the no. of calories you have consumed etc. What makes it different from other wearables? The fact that it can also track your heartbeat, your pulse rate, and even your blood pressure as well and would make predictions about your health conditions. It would also predict the risks to your health based on these trackings. Surprisingly it can generate an alert if your heart rises to an unusual level when you’ve been idle for over 10 minutes.
How did it happen?
A man while sitting idle at home in Atlanta, USA received a notification on his Apple iWatch pinged him: His heart rate was wildly high despite being at rest. To bring to your notice, he struggled with heart issues for a decade and was recently been diagnosed with an abnormal heart rate condition called atrial fibrillation.
So by the time he reached a nearby hospital that night, his heart was failing. Fortunately, his story was a happy ending: He walked out of the hospital a few days later, in large, crediting his watch with saving his life.
“If it hadn’t been for the iWatch, I would have gone to bed that night and I probably wouldn’t have woken up” were his exact words.
Caution !!
But these tracking devices should be seen only as a complement to healthcare. These can never replace doctors. Doctors still are of the highest importance.
Aaron Baggish, M.D., director of the Cardiovascular Performance Program at the Massachusetts General Hospital Heart Center says: “Getting a watch that gives you health information should never be a substitute for getting a good doctor who understands heart health and also sports and athletics.”
2. BIG DATA IN MENTAL HEALTHCARE
Mental Health Issues — One of the most common problems today’s youth faces and still this remains unaddressed. According to WHO — “Globally, depression is one of the leading causes of illness and disability among youths”.
Youths are hesitant to share this problem and don’t really find a way to get out of this trap. We just tend to ignore this serious problem. And this important issue can’t be taken for granted. Big Data realizes its importance and is here to find solutions to deal with it. Few researchers from the University of Chicago has taken the initiative to help their students in fighting with mental healthcare issues. They are developing an application that monitors their sleep and other activity patterns which will help them to discover solutions to battle problems such as depression. When the app recognizes behaviors that match the symptoms of depression (irregular physical activity, abnormal sleep patterns, drop in attendance, etc.), it immediately starts notifying about the possible solutions that a counselor would give them. This data would be accessed by their counselor to track more students and extend a helping hand to them.
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3. MOBILE PHONES CAN SAVE YOU FROM MALARIA
Every year, malaria kills more than 400,000 people around the world and not to your surprise most of them are children. A recent study in Bangladesh discovered that using the data gathered from mobile phone networks that track the movement of people across the country can help in predicting the areas that are prone to malaria and facilitating the Health Authorities to take the necessary preventive measures. Telenor, one of the biggest telecom companies in Bangladesh, collects this data from the mobile phones and for further analysis sends it to Harvard School of Public Health and a research unit in Thailand run by specialists from Oxford and Mahidol universities. This data from mobile phones and the data from their Health Ministry of several medical surveys are used to risk maps specifying the locations that are most likely to have malaria outbreaks and alerting the local authorities to take preventive measures such as spraying insecticides, supplying medicines to the people, stockpiling bed bets, etc.
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Big Data to Transform Healthcare Industry
Drug Discovery is one of the most complicated processes and the cost of bringing up a new drug in the market could be as much as USD 2.6 billion. On average, it takes 12 years for a drug to get officially submitted. Big Data Analysis using some advanced Machine Learning algorithms can reduce this time by creating a simulation of how a drug would react to different body nutrients and predict the result on its basis. Thus initial screening would be sufficient to determine the possibility of the drug efficacy. This not only will reduce the cost and time of drug development but would almost eradicate the risk of failure.
Big Data will reduce the costs of treatment by avoiding unnecessary diagnoses. It will enhance the overall operational efficiency of the healthcare companies and has allowed them to make the required changes.
Big Data Analytics would allow health practitioners to find a better cure for a disease by recognizing unknown connections and hidden patterns. Analyzing the patients through clinical studies and the kind of medication that suits them.
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Big Data is proving to be the oxygen cylinder that the healthcare industry needed for a long time. Big Data Analytics is taking Medical Sciences to a whole new level, from digitalization of medical records to drug discovery and genetic disease exploration. And this is just the beginning. Healthcare would save many more lives with Big Data coming into the picture. Big Data is like a blessing for the healthcare industry.
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