Big Data in Healthcare

Healthcare will always be a pressing issue in our political world. Whether its figuring out the best structure for paying for it, to regulating drug costs with privately owned companies, there are many things that need to be taken into consideration for this topic. The McKinsey article above breaks down how big data has already started to revolutionize the healthcare industry. Healthcare expenses currently account for roughly 17% of our country’s GDP, which is a staggering figure.

This all leads into the breakdown of how doctors make decisions with patients, as far as when to prescribe medicine and what to prescribe. When individual data is collected and compared to large amounts of clinical data, doctors are able to swiftly make educated decisions to help a patient.

As previously mentioned, there are a number of different factors that are taken into account when investigating the healthcare field and the article outlines a number of these things, such as way of living, type of care, best provider, right value, and right innovation. So many things are presented to us in all of these different fields, but it’s extremely hard to make a good, informed decision on our own. Despite the capabilities of big data, I believe that there will always be human challenges associated with the issue, no matter how much data we are able to collect.

http://www.mckinsey.com/industries/healthcare-systems-and-services/our-insights/the-big-data-revolution-in-us-health-care