Identifying Essential Factors for Deriving Value from Big Data Analytics in Healthcare.

Big data analytics is emerging in many industries and is a prominent undertaking in healthcare. The healthcare industry has more opportunities now to garner insights and advantages from data than ever before. Big data analytics has the potential to enhance many aspects of the industry from enhancing quality of patient care to revenue cycle improvements. However, successfully leveraging big data analytics poses challenges as well, such as data standardization and integrity. Therefore, it will be important to identify the essential factors that will facilitate the ability to derive the maximum value from big data analytics for such endeavors. This research proposes to identify these pivotal factors of big data analytics in healthcare by utilizing value-focused thinking (VFT). VFT will entail interviews with both healthcare data analysts and management to identify these important factors. The findings can provide guidance to practitioners when considering the essential factors for big data analytics success, as well as provide topics for future research.