Going Digital: A Survey on Digitalization and Large-Scale Data Analytics in Healthcare

TLDR

Digitalization and large‑scale data analytics are expected to dramatically reshape future healthcare organization. This survey reviews recent trends toward digitalization and large‑scale data analytics in healthcare, including initiatives for personalized medicine. The authors analyze political initiatives, collaborative networks, and wearable technologies that shift care from paper to electronic, support decision‑making, enable continuous monitoring, and promote personalized medicine.

Abstract

We provide an overview of the recent trends toward digitalization and large-scale data analytics in healthcare. It is expected that these trends are instrumental in the dramatic changes in the way healthcare will be organized in the future. We discuss the recent political initiatives designed to shift care delivery processes from paper to electronic, with the goals of more effective treatments with better outcomes; cost pressure is a major driver of innovation. We describe newly developed networks of healthcare providers, research organizations, and commercial vendors to jointly analyze data for the development of decision support systems. We address the trend toward continuous healthcare where health is monitored by wearable and stationary devices; a related development is that patients increasingly assume responsibility for their own health data. Finally, we discuss recent initiatives toward a personalized medicine, based on advances in molecular medicine, data management, and data analytics.