Big data in healthcare

The current era of ‘big data’ in healthcare is a direct result of the gradual culmination across decades of accumulation of large volumes of data, along with substantial advances in tools capable of analysing that data. Potential applications cut across almost all aspects of healthcare, including improving the efficiency of health systems, evaluating the efficacy of treatments using volumes of real-world data, and tailoring treatments to individual patient profiles through ‘precision medicine’. These prospects must be tempered, however, not only against the practical reality of what is possible through big data, but also how big data can be responsibly and ethically managed.