ABSTRACT
Today healthcare data resides in multiple, independent locations, including the physician office, the electronic health record (EHR) systems, insurance claims databases, siloed personal health apps, research and clinical trial databases, imaging files and of course paper. To bring order to these “islands” of information. there is an enormous opportunity to establish a unified data repository, an architecture that delivers a complete picture of the patient. Here the IoT, Big Data and wearables are a natural fit. Arguably the biggest winner in the wearables sweepstakes, Big Data derived from wearables can be used to extract value, identify long term patterns and risk factors for clinicians and researchers. Evidence distilled from this treasure trove of clinical information, and particularly genomic data, can improve diagnoses, trigger earlier interventions, and discover more effective treatments. There are of course, hurdles. Who owns the data and who has access? How much is too much? What security provisions are being employed to “bulletproof ” protected information? Managing huge volumes of data – we are now in the realm of “exabytes” of data produced daily-is going to require deft handling.
