How is cloud and big data changing healthcare in 2016

The push for medical-based Big Data analytics and an increase in the pervasive role of cloud services has launched healthcare into a new frontier. As more medical information is uploaded to the cloud and vastly more analytics carried out on Big Data repositories of this information, the clearer the picture of healthcare will become. The door being opened by this sort of technology for 2016 covers business and medical treatment approaches that will continue to extend beyond relying on what any one doctor says is best for a practice or its patients. In some ways, the coming technological changes will dramatically impact how a doctor operates in a business and medical capacity.
Big Data Analytics Helping With Patient Care
Although doctors can be a source of vast medical knowledge, the modern medical landscape is slowly shifting emphasis away from doctors opinions to the hard facts of Big Data analytics. 2016 will be no exception to this progressive, technology-driven, evolutionary trend in the healthcare industry. While a team of doctors may be able to assess and speculate about a patient’s condition, the simple fact remains that computers are already starting to produce these results faster. What a doctor is unable to do for their patient is to rapidly scour thousands, if not millions, of similar case studies in the matter of seconds. As more cloud-based Big Data medical repositories weigh in on patient care, much of the hard thinking may be removed from the doctor’s daily routine. Even though doctors may feel that these enhanced computer systems have encroached on their profession, according to this source, many analysts would like to see more Big Data doctors enter the field as we step forward into the very near future. One of the major reasons for this is because doctors collect tons of important medical data, but they are not necessarily very efficient at knowing what to do with that data to improve patient care, lower costs and improve ROI.
Big Data Versus Big Disease
According to BCBS, Blue Cross and Blue Shield are on a major push to make a huge dent in heart-related deaths. BCBS is taking steps to employ the use of Big Data to help prevent 1-million heart attacks by 2017. By sharing the information they have gathered on heart health with other medical institutions, BCBS hopes to demonstrate how Big Data can be used to arrest Big Disease in ways not yet experienced in the medical industry. Since Big Data analytics make it possible to discover correlations in aggregated data, which would normally go overlooked by doctors, 2016 could end up being a major turning point in shifting the healthcare system towards a more rigorous disease prevention model for healthcare. If successful, such efforts would significantly serve to help lower insurance costs across the board for a condition that proves to be one of the leading causes of death in the world.
Bringing Medical Practices up to Date
While many doctors have resisted moving forward with technology, the need for Big Data analytics and cloud services, which are intended for such purposes as: EMR record-keeping and improving a medical practice’s business efficiency, makes the need for an upgrade in office technology a must for lagging doctors in 2016. To function without the help of quality, medical-management software will only serve to distance tech deficient doctors from their patients and the ongoing forward progression of the medical industry itself. As with any changing industry, doctors need to recognize that their patients are emerging digital natives who expect their physicians to be tech savvy and ready to connect in the coming year. For many medical professionals, this ability to connect digitally with their patients will play hard into how well their business operates in light of a dying elderly, less tech experienced customer-base.
Conclusion
Technology has long been a point of leverage for increasing the usefulness and efficiency of modern healthcare. As technology reaches deeper into the daily operations of medical practices, doctors will be able to stay on top of the latest information Big Data and cloud services will be offering these medical professionals. With better analytics at the average doctor’s fingertips, patient diagnostics and preventative measures will continue to improve throughout the healthcare landscape. For patients, this means better prevention and treatment all around. With the connectivity that cloud services provides to medical professionals, this also means moving towards improvements that will keep doctors closer to the cutting edge of what their industry has to offer.