re: Why Physicians Don't Like Big Data
I don't think your average, non-academic, non-administrative physician could care less about data analytics at this point. While everyone has heard the term and has at least a general sense of what it's all about (cost cutting), the fact is that it has virtually no impact on almost any physician's practice, yet. Private institutions are beginning to publish articles extolling the findings of some analytical study, but these are very limited in scope and very tentative in their conclusions. The fact is - and the majority of physicians understand this, too - that almost no one, and certainly not the government, has as yet obtained enough _valid_ data to be of any use. Given that medicine's stock in trade for the last 50 years has been data analytics, albeit on a much smaller scale (what else do you call all those double-blind studies over the years), the low hanging fruit is long gone. To be useful data analytics on the scale envisioned by the IT community needs hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of data pieces, and the medical community does not yet have either the standardized dictionary or the data transmission standards necessary to obtain _valid_ data on that scale, except in a very few instances at large academic institutions, and a couple of private insurers.
User Rank: Apprentice
8/26/2013 | 7:02:47 PM
Jay Simmons
Information Week Contributor