"How Big Data Is Changing Healthcare"

            Big Data has an increasingly beneficial relationship with the healthcare industry, due to the most recent advances in health monitoring and tracking. In recent years, Big Data has been used to improve the healthcare industry through its attempts to predict, cure, and avoid disease and illness, thus simultaneously improving overall quality of life. The overall goal of using Big Data with healthcare is to detect problems and warning signs of disease before they are visible in a patient through the use of medical data insights.

            I found it particularly interesting that the driving force behind this advancing attention to health monitoring and disease prevention is not the healthcare industries and doctors, but it is the patients themselves. Marr describes the growing concern that individuals have for their own health in recent years by means of health tracking devices such as FitBit. It is worth emphasizing that the correlation between healthcare and individuals is not a coerced one. Additionally, it is worth noting how Big Data can be used towards discovering the cure for cancer. Marr mentions the service that Flatiron Health has developed, OncologyCloud. This service indicates that over 95% of available data on cancer patients go unanalyzed. OncologyCloud aims to take this unused data and put it to use in clinical trials to further their studies on the reasons and causes for cancer in such patients. According to Business Wire, “the platform is used by over 2,000 clinicians to support the treatment of nearly one million active cancer patients, and helps community oncology practices and cancer centers enhance patient care, optimize workflow and thrive in today’s healthcare environment.” This shows a proactive approach to cancer research and treatment, providing medical professionals with as much data as possible in the hopes of improving lives. Lastly, Marr discusses the strong need for data protection and screen guards on the medical information that would be shared between patients and medical professionals. I found it so surprising that cyber thieves earn more money from stealing health records than from stealing credit card data. This may cause issues to implement health services and data technologies in the future due to this concern and need for security among users. However, if privacy can be stabilized and maintained, Marr explains how beneficial these services will be towards the quest for a better understanding of our health and bodies.

            I think that the article overlooked the potential breech of privacy that health monitoring may pose on its users; some users may be uncomfortable sharing their personal medical records over data platforms. Also, Big Data and healthcare tracking is highly objective; there are some health concerns and issues that cannot simply be explained by numbers and data, but rather by psychological behaviors, for example. Lastly, this article overlooks the potential decline in the need for doctors and clinics in the article’s description of how our interactions with doctors will definitely change due to the switch from personal connections to Internet connections via Telemedicine.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/bernardmarr/2015/04/21/how-big-data-is-changing-healthcare/2/#64eef1645b7a

http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20151109005489/en/Flatiron-Health-Unveils-Features-Enhancements-OncologyCloudTM-Software