The effectiveness of big data in health care: A systematic review

Abstract

There is a consensus among scientists that the analysis of Big Data in health care (such as electronic health records, patient reported outcomes or inmotion data) can improve clinical research and the quality of care provided to patients. Yet there is little knowledge about the actual effectiveness of Big Data in the health care sector. The aim of this study was to perform a systematic review of the literature in order to determine the extent to which Big Data applications in health care systems have managed to improve patient experiences and clinicians' behavior as well as the quality of care provided to patients. All searches for relevant articles were performed in the PubMed database. From the 108 potentially relevant articles 12 satisfied the inclusion criteria for this study. The findings showed that in the case of nine articles the researchers reported positive effect of Big Data. However, some negative results were recorded in the case of three articles. The main benefits of Big Data application involved positive behavior change, improved usability and efficient decision support. However, problems were identified for technology acceptance. Most problems occurred in the case of systems processing heterogeneous datasets, patient reported outcomes and in motion data, as opposed to electronic health record systems. The paper concludes by highlighting some areas of investigation where further research is needed to understand the use of Big Data in health care and improve its effectiveness.