From the December 2014 issue of HealthCare Business News magazine
By Michael Morris
A perfect storm is brewing in technology: data availability and access to key skill sets to solve previously unimaginable problems. It’s referred to as, “The Big Data Revolution” and this confluence of technology, data and skill will allow us to do amazing things.
• Technology: The speed of technological advances in processing and storage continue to break Moore’s Law. Use of shared infrastructures and cloud allow for new levels of access to less established research.
• Data: The move from an analog world (manual, captured, single tenant) to a digital world (automated, inferred, multitenant) is causing data volumes to increase at a geometric rate. Think about the data being captured by sensors and devices like Fitbit and Apple Health, this trend will increase and start becoming more specialized for conditions like chronic disease.
• Skill: New paradigms in resource management, including crowdsourcing, enable access to a talent pool that spans beyond department, division, company, industry, background or country. As CEO, it’s critical to understand these top 5 factors in harnessing The Big Data Revolution in order to increase the quality of care for patients, while staying relevant in an environment where new players and disruptive technology are challenging incumbents.
No more tribal knowledge
Traditionally, the relationship with your doctor was based on their knowledge of you and your family history. Data was very personalized and they combined that with a knowledgebase of experience and research to assess proper course of action. What has changed is the ability to access our genome. We can now view, read and understand our entire genetic makeup. This allows us to compare against other genomes.
A multi-tenant data infrastructure allows an individual’s genome to be combined with all other available genomes to make educated and specific decisions on a condition, treatment and outcome. Genomes, the technology used to store them and the algorithms applied to analyze them will take the guesswork out of health care. In addition, we now have data being collected by devices and sensors (again, like Fitbit and Apple Health) that collect data between the whitespace of doctor visits. All of this data enables an unprecedented level of analysis, which will eventually lead into unchartered territory around predictive analytics.
Predictive
Think about a world where your doctor visit is no longer about what condition you have and it now becomes a conversation of what condition you are going to have or may have in the future. Prognoses can now be that specific, and backed by data inherent to you instead of data coming from an industry journal. Prediction accuracy is the wildcard here, but what we’re sure of is that it will get better until we approach the theoretical limit on accuracy (i.e. knowing). Think about the global impact of applying this to the simple common cold, or the most complex chronic diseases.
