🧬 Streaming Data in the

Healthcare Industry

Big data is of enormous significance to the healthcare industry — including

its use in everything from genetic research to advanced medical imaging and

research on improving quality of care. While conducting big data analysis

in each of these areas is significant in furthering research, a major benefit

is applying this information to clinical medicine. If enough data is captured,

this data can be applied practically and quickly at the right time to help save

lives. Medical clinicians and researchers are using streaming data to speed

decision making in hospital settings and improve healthcare outcomes for

patients.

Doctors make use of large amounts of time-sensitive data when caring for

patients, including results of lab tests, pathology reports, X-rays, and digital

imaging. They also use medical devices to monitor a patient’s vital signs such

as blood pressure, heart rate, and temperature. While these devices provide

alerts when the readings go out of normal range, in some cases, preventive

action could take place if doctors were able to receive an early warning. Subtle

changes in a patient’s condition are often hard to pick up with a physical

exam, but could be picked up by monitoring devices if a way existed to have

more immediate access to the data.

Monitoring devices used in intensive care units generate thousands of read-

ings every second. In the past, these readings have been summarized into

one reading every 30–60 minutes. These devices were monitoring very large

volumes of data, but because of technology limitation, much of that data was

not available for analysis.