Medical Data Proliferation – One Pattern, One Value, and One Prediction
Medical data will proliferate exponentially in the coming years. There are many drivers and patterns. Of special interest to the US data industry is the proliferation generated by mobile sensory devices.
The devices themselves are proliferating. While away from medical facilities, one may wear or be attached to devices that sense pulse, blood pressure, body temperature, blood flow rates, and many of the other vital indictors. These data can be generated and stored at high rates. In the US, increasingly the data are stored in private medical practice networks. Imagine a small, 4,000-patient group fitted with a device or two, each generating data 24 hours per day.
In its “The World in 2012” edition the Economist points out the high value obtained from such data by Britain’s National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence. They are able to closely monitor the benefits of new drugs and expensive treatments. There are studies showing the US value of such systems could be in the hundreds-of-billions range.
The data are accumulating, the value is becoming obvious, and the contracts to aggregate data from scattered systems will be many and huge. Nearly as demanding, will be the contracts to order the data so it may accessed by business intelligence systems.
