Big Data Solves Healthcare Obstacles

When you are waiting for results from a medical test like a cancer biopsy, that call from your doctor can’t come fast enough. As a doctor, I am sometimes so buried in an avalanche of medical records that it can delay decisions about what to do next.

It’s exactly this situation — the sheer amount of information that we doctors deal with and our struggle to identify and act on the right information — that’s causing more healthcare organizations to turn to Big Data and analytics.

The problem isn’t that doctors and hospitals don’t have enough information. It’s that we have too much. We’re drowning in data, and medical information is doubling every five years. More than 80 percent of a hospital’s data today is recorded in doctors’ notes, registration and discharge forms, phone calls, x-rays, and MRIs, or the so-called “unstructured” data that can be difficult to sift through.

Read the full story here: http://wapo.st/1aVEe2z

Source: Washington Post