How Big Data Will Unlock the Potential of Healthcare

How Big Data Will Unlock the Potential of Healthcare

Data is driving the future of business, and any company not prepared for this transformation is at risk of being left behind.

This is a reality in almost every sector, but it’s especially relevant to companies in the healthcare industry. That’s because the amount of health data being created is growing at a 48% rate annually, and by 2020, a Stanford University study estimates that 2,314 exabytes of healthcare data will be produced per year.

Simply put, the companies that can extract meaningful insights from these mountains of data will have a serious and durable competitive advantage – and those that don’t have a proper strategy for this boom in data will get lost in the weeds.

Breaking Down Big Data

Today’s infographic comes to us from Publicis Health, and it shows why big data is one of the six forces transforming the life sciences and pharmaceuticals industries.

Big data in healthcare spans four different dimensions:

Volume
The sheer amount of data created can be processed and interpreted by AI.

Veracity
Noise, abnormality, and biases can undermine trust and accuracy of data. Data assurance can help guarantee analytics are credible and error-free.

Velocity
Healthcare is time sensitive, and being able to process large amounts of data in real-time is crucial.

Variety
Big data comes from a myriad of sources, such as social media or IoT devices. Actionable insights can be gained from analyzing different data sources together.

Healthcare businesses must learn to quickly distill information from masses of data and to transform them into actionable insights. The ability to extract these insights will power the future of health, and become a differentiator for companies to thrive and stay ahead of emerging competitors.

Analytical Nirvana

How can companies reach “analytical nirvana”, a state where analytics can be used for strategic differentiation?

Companies must move towards being more service-focused, by transforming data into compelling stories that bridge the gap between customer engagement and action.

Further, this change must be powered by predictive health intelligence that can interpret data to create more personalized experiences for customers. Finally, data must be democratized throughout an organization, so that even non-analysts can deploy gained insights to achieve these other goals.

This journey may seem like a daunting task, but companies that successfully navigate this transformation will gain an edge that will continue to grow in importance in the digital era.

This is part two of a seven part series. Stay tuned by subscribing to Visual Capitalist for free, as we go into these six forces in more detail in the future.