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How is Big Data bringing a change in Healthcare Analysis

2 Apr 2018
- Anshua Mukherjee
- Industry Insights
Analytics, Big Data, Healthcare, Industry Analysis

The concept of “big data” is not new, however the way it is defined is constantly changing. Various attempts at defining big data essentially characterize it as a collection of data elements whose size, speed, type, and/or complexity require one to seek, adopt, and invent new hardware and software mechanisms in order to successfully store, analyse, and visualize the data. Healthcare is a prime example of how the three Vs of data, velocity (speed of generation of data), variety, and volume, are an innate aspect of the data it produces. This data is spread among multiple healthcare systems, health insurers, researchers, government entities, and so forth. Furthermore, each of these data repositories is siloed and inherently incapable of providing a platform for global data transparency. To add to the three Vs, the veracity of healthcare data is also critical for its meaningful use towards developing translational research.

The Three different fields where Big Data is being used are:

Image Processing

Medical images are an important source of data frequently used for diagnosis, therapy assessment and planning. Computed tomography (CT), magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), X-ray, molecular imaging, ultrasound, photoacoustic imaging, fluoroscopy, positron emission tomography-computed tomography (PET-CT), and mammography are some of the examples of imaging techniques that are well established within clinical settings. Medical image data can range anywhere from a few megabytes for a single study (e.g., histology images) to hundreds of megabytes per study (e.g., thin-slice CT studies comprising upto 2500+ scans per study. Such data requires large storage capacities if stored for long term. It also demands fast and accurate algorithms if any decision assisting automation were to be performed using the data. In addition, if other sources of data acquired for each patient are also utilized during the diagnoses, prognosis, and treatment processes, then the problem of providing cohesive storage and developing efficient methods capable of encapsulating the broad range of data becomes a challenge.

Signal Processing

Similar to medical images, medical signals also pose volume and velocity obstacles especially during continuous, high-resolution acquisition and storage from a multitude of monitors connected to each patient. However, in addition to the data size issues, physiological signals also pose complexity of a spatiotemporal nature. Analysis of physiological signals is often more meaningful when presented along with situational context awareness which needs to be embedded into the development of continuous monitoring and predictive systems to ensure its effectiveness and robustness.

Genomics

The cost to sequence the human genome (encompassing 30,000 to 35,000 genes) is rapidly decreasing with the development of high-throughput sequencing technology . With implications for current public health policies and delivery of care , analysing genome-scale data for developing actionable recommendations in a timely manner is a significant challenge to the field of computational biology. Cost and time to deliver recommendations are crucial in a clinical setting. Initiatives tackling this complex problem include tracking of 100,000 subjects over 20 to 30 years using the predictive, preventive, participatory, and personalized health, referred to as P4, medicine paradigm as well as an integrative personal omics profile . The P4 initiative is using a system approach for (i) analyzing genome-scale datasets to determine disease states, (ii) moving towards blood based diagnostic tools for continuous monitoring of a subject, (iii) exploring new approaches to drug target discovery, developing tools to deal with big data challenges of capturing, validating, storing, mining, integrating, and finally (iv) modelling data for each individual. The integrative personal omics profile (iPOP) combines physiological monitoring and multiple high-throughput methods for genome sequencing to generate a detailed health and disease states of a subject.

Ultimately, realizing actionable recommendations at the clinical level remains a grand challenge for this field. Utilizing such high density data for exploration, discovery, and clinical translation demands novel big data approaches and analytics.

Written by: Anshua Mukherjee is a current batch student of SOIL (2017-18). She is pursuing the one year PGPM in Business Leadership with a specialization in Analytics.

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