Harnessing the Power of Big Data
‘ The complexity of data will only continue to grow as health organizations and the patients they serve become more hyper connected across devices and environments ’
by first making sense of vast amounts of information so that we can find solutions . Business intelligence has the potential to improve the health of entire populations by giving providers , local governments , universities and NGOs insight from disparate data sources to better predict , prevent or react to health trends . In fact , a recent study conducted by IDC found that the health industry worldwide stands to gain $ 109 billion in value from data over the next four years .
By applying analytics that combine disparate sources of data from electronic health records , hospital operations and other community , economic , social , geographic and environmental sources , we can gain new insight to solve problems . For example , one health system in the upper Midwest mined its patient records for rates of obesity and diabetes and compared the data with GIS maps showing parks and green-spaces as well as fast food restaurants overlaying the information as a heat map .
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