Big Data in Healthcare: Applications and Challenges

The demand for the healthcare sector has increased rapidly which, in turn, has drastically increased the need to manage healthcare and innovative medicines. This demand has been the main reason for the need for new technologies being initiated in the healthcare industry. The use of big data analysis in the healthcare industry will be one of the major challenges that may take place in the coming years according to International Data Corporation (IDC). The IDC reports that big data will show immense growth in the healthcare industry when compared to other industries. There are many tools that come along with big data. These tools will collect, manage, analyze, and assimilate huge loads of data which are the output of the present healthcare system. This makes it evident that, by 2025, the data from the healthcare industry will show a Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of 36%. This chapter highlights the huge impact of the big data in the healthcare industry and the various factors that makes it very challenging to manage and process big data in the healthcare sector before the healthcare implements big data.