Does Big Data Offer Big Promise or Big Hype?

I’ve written previously about the significant strides we’re making in the global fight against cancer – and much of the progress revolves around big data. We’ve come so far, in fact, that algorithms can now teach themselves to spot some cancers, and their accuracy rivals that of human diagnosticians. Beyond oncology, many fields are beginning to use big data in a similarly powerful way.

Big data is already indispensable to the health care ecosystem, from medical research, to ongoing care, to predictive and preventive models of disease. Yet we still haven’t come close to harnessing its full potential – and there are several major obstacles to surmount before we do. These are the central findings of Stanford Medicine’s inaugural Health Trends Report, which establishes a set of priorities for leveraging big data to drive change across the entire health care sector. 

I talked about these findings at the BIO International Convention last month in San Diego, where I was in conversation with Bloomberg News health reporter Caroline Chen. In particular, we discussed the report’s revelation of big data challenges for two of the most important stakeholders in the health care system: physicians and patients.

For doctors, big data will ultimately bring an expanded power to treat patients preventively – but a massive shift in their training and education will need to take place first. And it’s not just providers that need this new training. Maximizing data’s potential in health care beyond simply collection and storage requires a data-literate workforce that can understand how to manage, analyze, and interpret large datasets. This will be especially critical as efforts to facilitate and manage interoperability continue. Organizations must also make significant investments in the infrastructure, analytical tools, and data governance solutions to support this workforce.

For patients, big data means more opportunities than ever to engage directly in the management of their own health. Technologies like wearable devices, at-home testing services, and telemedicine move patients closer to becoming partners in their own care. But we must first tackle concerns about data privacy and enhance the ability of patients to understand and act on their medical data.

As Kleiner Perkins’ Mary Meeker recently said when presenting her annual Internet Trends Report, “Health care is at a digital inflection point.” A focus on data in the coming years has the potential to make care more preventive, predictive, and personalized, achieving our vision of Precision Health. At the same time, we’ll succeed in meaningfully reducing health care costs while improving patient outcomes. But we must first overcome the substantial hurdles sitting squarely and solidly in our path.

At the conclusion of our Health Trends Report, we’ve offered insights on how to navigate the road ahead, but these are only a start. Going forward, the public and private sectors must work closely together to overcome the challenges to broad big data application, listening to and engaging with a range of voices across biomedical research, education, and patient care – and ensuring that we all make the most of this moment where the stakes are high, but the opportunities are limitless.