A Review of Big Data and Its Applications in Healthcare and Public Sector

Abstract

Big Data has been a buzzword in the IT sector for a few years now. It has attracted attention from researchers, industry and academia around the world. This chapter is intended to introduce Big data and its related technologies and further trace the challenges. In this chapter, we discuss the applications of big data technologies in the fields of healthcare and public sector. Over the preceding few years, computing power has increased substantially while the storage costs have reduced significantly, leading to businesses being able to produce and store huge volumes of data. Also, increasing penetration of hand-held and internet enabled devices had led to an explosion in data generation. Social media is exemplary regarding this phenomenon. Such huge volumes of data cannot be handled using existing frameworks and requires new and innovative techniques to handle it. In this chapter, we will briefly discuss the use of big data in healthcare and its potential use cases such as preventive healthcare planning and predictive analytics. We will also discuss the potential use of big data in public sector and its applications like urban management and inclusive decision making. We will further highlight the challenges that hinder the potential use of big data technologies in these areas.