Paper Info
Title
Big Data, Big Problems: A Healthcare Perspective.
Abstract
Much has been written on the benefits of big data for healthcare such as improving patient outcomes, public health surveillance, and healthcare policy decisions. Over the past five years, Big Data, and the data sciences field in general, has been hyped as the "Holy Grail" for the healthcare industry promising a more efficient healthcare system with the promise of improved healthcare outcomes. However, more recently, healthcare researchers are exposing the potential and harmful effects Big Data can have on patient care associating it with increased medical costs, patient mortality, and misguided decision making by clinicians and healthcare policy makers. In this paper, we review the current Big Data trends with a specific focus on the inadvertent negative impacts that Big Data could have on healthcare, in general, and specifically, as it relates to patient and clinical care. Our study results show that although Big Data is built up to be as a the "Holy Grail" for healthcare, small data techniques using traditional statistical methods are, in many cases, more accurate and can lead to more improved healthcare outcomes than Big Data methods. In sum, Big Data for healthcare may cause more problems for the healthcare industry than solutions, and in short, when it comes to the use of data in healthcare, "size isn't everything."
Year
DOI
Venue
2017
10.3233/978-1-61499-781-8-36
Studies in Health Technology and Informatics
Keywords
Field
DocType
Big Data,Healthcare,Challenges,Opportunities,Costs
Data science,Health care,Knowledge management,Big data,Medicine
Conference
Volume
ISSN
Citations 
238
0926-9630
0
PageRank 
References 
Authors
0.34
0
5
Name
Order
Citations
PageRank
Mowafa S. Househ111631.32
Bakheet Al-Dosari2293.80
Abdullah Alanazi302.37
André Kushniruk450682.51
Elizabeth M Borycki522262.45