Big Data

Analysis of Google Searches and of Vast Amounts of Statistics Are Helping to Uncover New Medical Treatments and Ways to Improve Health.

- Sarah Marinos

Big data. It’s a term you may have heard thrown around, but what exactly is it? And how could it be making a difference to our health now and a few years into the future?

Big data is the broad name given to massive and complex sets of detailed statistics and information. From a health perspective, that data might be hospital admission numbers, the number of people diagnosed with a certain disease, or the number of times people do a Google search for a specific symptom they are worried about.

However big data is collected and whatever shape it takes, experts believe it promises to be a gamechanger in healthcare. It has the potential to improve and streamline healthcare systems and to help find ways to better prevent, diagnose, treat and cure disease.

“Big data has enormous potential and offers enormous community benefit,” says Professor Sallie Pearson of the Centre for Big Data Research in Health at the University of New South Wales.

“We need to harness this data and use it for the public good.”

PATIENTS LIKE YOU

In the US, entrepreneurs Ben and Jamie Heywood are already harnessing the promise of big data. They started PatientsLikeMe – the “world’s largest personalised health network”. It has 600,000 members who use the network to report and share their experiences of some 2800 different medical conditions.