Big Data - Healthcare

[pic 1]

Report

Big Data - Healthcare

Introduction to Big Data

Charles Té,

Master in Finance

Class 2016/2017

Introduction

In the past decade, pharmaceutical companies have been amassing years of research data into medical databases while patients have seen their records digitized (Electronic Health Records). An Electronic Health Record is the digital version of an individual’s medical information, such as disease diagnosis and test results, and allows care providers to share this information remotely and in a secure way. Though most data collected from patient is considered unstructured data, only 7% of the total patient data must be structured to fall in the requirements for meaningful use. Consequently, the growing collection and use of EHR has formed an appropriate environment for the use of big data and analytics into the healthcare industry. While still recent, a big data revolution in healthcare is on its way, like in many other industries. This short report exhibits under the form of cases the current use of analytics and big data in the industry and offers an insight into the future potential practices that could transform the sector. (Erskin, A., 2016). 

1. Use of big data in hospitals for prevention

Not often mentioned in the headlines, Sepsis is one of the top ten disease that leads to mortality in the US. Estimates for the number of people hospitalized due to sepsis in the US reach 1 million per year. The disease also known as “blood poisoning” is the result of a huge immune response to bacterial infection that gets into the blood and can lead to organ injury or failure (Augur, H). Treatments for Sepsis are known and consist in antibiotics as most cases are caused by bacterial infection. However, the infection spreads at high speed and be mortal in a matter of hours or days therefore prevention techniques are at least as important as treatments.

The main issue found with the prevention of Sepsis is that other diseases display similar symptoms including fever, fast breathing and heart rate, chills, confusion, disorientation and so on. Doctors when diagnosing the patients do not have perfect exactitude of their conditions and in often case symptoms occur when patients have been discharged from the hospital.

Innovative solutions to tackle these issues have been sought by key players in IT and healthcare. Medical device maker Vital Connect, in collaboration with analytics specialist Clear Story Data created a live clinical monitoring solution which consist of a biosensor Band-Aid like patch. The solution can detect system inflammatory response syndrome (SIRS), the precursor of the sepsis disease. The patch can be worn directly on the chest next to the heart at all time and is used to track all types of information from the patient such as heart rate, breathing, skin temperature but also body posture and physical activity. (Olavsrud, T., 2015). Connected to a smartphone, the biosensor patch transforms the massive amount of data collected into statistics. All the patient’s clinical data is then stored into the affiliated hospital or clinic and can be analysed by algorithms to determine the likelihood of developing SIRS, by correlating the data against systemic patterns. Caregivers can identify in real time whether their patients are at risk and start preventive measures.