The adage, “Health Is Wealth” withstood the testimony of time. How true this is! In the recent past, there have been many changes in the life style of people. Lack of discipline, pollution, work related stress, irregular diet, insomnia etc are exhibiting devastating impact on their health. Visits to doctors and taking the pills have become a common practice. Treating so many patients with insufficient data has become very difficult for the doctors. Generally, patients do not maintain data, which is a very serious blockade for the doctors during treatment. A robust, agile and technologically enabled system is the need of the hour to provide solution to this problem. Big Data is the only visible solution.
It is indeed a fact that data has the potential to transform the world and businesses to build a healthy planet. When a patient visits a doctor, all the data must be properly stored. This data includes all details about the patient. Such Data collection allows health systems to deliver an effective service by creating the comprehensive pool of data of patients and enhance health outcomes. The implementation of data analytics eliminates the risk of unnecessary harm to patients. There are abundant examples which manifest the significance of data in healthcare.
Media is playing a decisive role in the modern-day technology. The inputs of media have always been very instrumental in collecting huge data for analysis. The role of rural health workers in this matter is also amazing. They visit villages and provide medical support to the patients who cannot come to cities because of financial and social problems. The data collected from the rural health workers must be stored in and integrated to a centrally processed server. The governments are trying to maintain the complete record of the people, which is a welcome sign. It is observed that many people are suffering from chronic diseases and organ damages and remain unattended and unsupervised, which is a very big grinding problem in the civilized society. This is where again; Data has a role to play here. Technology companies can come forward to address this problem by designing cutting-edge technologies to meet medical emergencies.
Big Data in healthcare is the data collected from different sources. This data is different from traditional data because of its high agility to span the entire digital universe of healthcare in a little time. Technology can be used to modernize business which will leverage data in different desired forms and minimize the time it takes to perform different necessary tasks. This is a tough work but most essential. The scientific use of data, in such instances not only supports a valiant cause but also takes with it the humane touch to the staff working on it.
Governments and other voluntary organizations implement many health programs to meet the medical emergencies of the people. Unfortunately, people do not have awareness about such schemes. There is a dire need of creating awareness among the people about the available facilities. Some other situations are more critical and excruciating. There may be a situation where there is a patient in desperate need of an organ for survival, but he may not be able to get that life saver in time because of lack of information about the availability of a strongly willing donor. In spite of the availability of a donor, the patient dies. This is just because of the gap in information channel. Such challenges can be addressed by several new technological improvements in healthcare by providing useful and actionable information. Data analysis provides an opportunity to send timely information, increase accuracy and save lives.
The government, technology companies, voluntary organizations and all the citizens must come together to fill in the aforesaid gaps. Undoubtedly, Data has enabled quick decision making and thereby saved lives. So, it must be accepted that Big Data is not only a revenue generator but also a life saver.