Introduction—Improving Healthcare with Big Data

With the advancement of computing systems and availability of new types of sensors, there has been a huge increase in the amount, type and variety of data that are collected and stored. By some estimates in 2013, over 90% of the world’s data had been created in the previous two years. In terms of health data, this has been impacted on by the increased use of Electronic Health Records (EHR), personalized medicine, and administrative data. Although it is difficult to comprehensively and simply characterise what constitutes Big Data, in terms of data itself, several key characteristics have been identified, which create particular opportunities and challenges.