9TECH OUTLOOKDec - Jan 2016Harnessing Big Data to Meet Today's Reality of Precision MedicineThe pharmaceutical and healthcare industries are facing major change as precision medicine drives smaller batches of drugs that treat smaller and more fragmented patient populations. In response to this shift in precision diagnoses and treatments, pharmaceutical companies are looking to harness Big Data to tell them where there is an unmet need for therapies, help them properly stratify patients for clinical trials, and provide information to clinicians to ensure those resulting drugs reach the right patients.Big Data also offers the potential to bridge gaps between pharmaceutical manufacturers, life sciences companies and healthcare providers. The more these entities work together, the more data can inform both patient care and therapy development, ultimately benefitting each individual patient by getting them the most effective therapies ­faster. For instance, during a clinical trial or standard workup, a clinician will be able to use the cloud to securely access dozens, hundreds or even thousands of other patients' anonymized information ­ and compare that to his/her patient's information. This unprecedented access to demographic information could not only help clinicians accurately diagnose or treat patients; more data collection will be able to inform pharmaceutical companies' drug development programs as they look to develop even more precision therapies.The Personal Side of Big Data: Individual Insights are Driven from Droves of DataIt's clear that Big Data analytics is a hot topic in healthcare today, because it offers the possibility of informing drug development, diagnoses, and therapeutic treatments better than ever before. There's also potential to take droves of data and whittle down the predictive analytics from a large-scale, population health level, to hyper-targeted and tailored, individual insights that clinicians can use in one-on-one,real-time conversations with their patients. In the words of a physician friend of mine, "I don't care about Big Data unless you can make it `Little Data'." In other words, data and insights will be most valuable when they use population-wide information to inform the care of an individual patient in the 10 minutes the clinician and patient are in an exam room together. Physicians should be able to use this data to predict a patient's need, or response to therapy- and get that patient treated faster and more effectively in just one visit.The idea of the cloud and big data's potential to deliver analyses at the point of care is one of the most promising trends in precision medicine, and we should expect to see these promises realized rapidly in the industry with the help of the cloud. Healthcare innovation is moving at the speed of light; big data shouldn't be too far behind. Data and insights will be most valuable when they use population-wide information to inform the care of an individual patient in the 10 minutes the clinician and patient are in an exam room togetherChris Larkin
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