A Framework for Big Data Technology in Health and Healthcare

Big data technologies can have particular importance in the field of healthcare. The volume of data available in digital form pertaining to the health of individuals has already become huge and is rapidly growing. It includes both the traditional clinically collected data, administrative data and increasingly other health and contextual sensor data collected in non-clinical settings. While the importance of analytics to healthcare is increasingly recognized, the healthcare industry is yet to fully harness the emergence of big data technologies specifically for carrying out analytics and to fully recognize the implications for healthcare. In this paper, we introduce a framework to help organize and guide the understanding of the application of big data technologies for processing health and healthcare data.