Big Data in Healthcare: Technical Challenges and Opportunities

Big data refers to the data generated in large volumes, with complexities, involving many parameters and their relevance. Every industry is going through transformation so as healthcare also. New diseases, new viruses are still challenges, whereas we successfully got escapes from many. The new ways of treatments based on research, new drugs, advancements in procedures, use of micro tools etc. has changed the healthcare sector to lot. Identification of diseases is more based on pathological tests than clinical practices. All these generates lot of data in healthcare sector also. So, in any sense health sector can’t do away with big data. The chapter discusses of big data, scope in healthcare, challenges of implementation, characteristics of data etc. in healthcare sector.