Data is quickly becoming one of those certainties in life, like death and taxes. It’ll always be there, and like the Once-ler’s Thneed factory from The Lorax (sorry, I have kids), data figures to keep on biggering, and biggering, and biggering and biggering.
More data means more knowledge, greater insights, smarter ideas and expanded opportunities for organizations to harness and learn from their data. Banks, retailers and even government are embracing big data, but while IDC estimated the big data market at $2.2 billion in 2011, only 6% of that investment came from health care.
On the flip side, a 2011 report from McKinsey Global Institute suggests if health care in the U.S. used big data to drive efficiency and quality, the potential could be more than $300 billion in value every year.