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Axes of a revolution: challenges and promises of big data in healthcare

Nature Medicine volume 26, pages 29–38 (2020)Cite this article

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Abstract

Health data are increasingly being generated at a massive scale, at various levels of phenotyping and from different types of resources. Concurrent with recent technological advances in both data-generation infrastructure and data-analysis methodologies, there have been many claims that these events will revolutionize healthcare, but such claims are still a matter of debate. Addressing the potential and challenges of big data in healthcare requires an understanding of the characteristics of the data. Here we characterize various properties of medical data, which we refer to as ‘axes’ of data, describe the considerations and tradeoffs taken when such data are generated, and the types of analyses that may achieve the tasks at hand. We then broadly describe the potential and challenges of using big data in healthcare resources, aiming to contribute to the ongoing discussion of the potential of big data resources to advance the understanding of health and disease.

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Fig. 1: The different axes of health data.
Fig. 2: Tradeoffs between axes of data.
Fig. 3: Global distribution of several biobanks and cohorts.
Fig. 4: Using human-based omics data in drug development.

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Author notes

  1. These authors contributed equally: Smadar Shilo, Hagai Rossman.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Computer Science and Applied Mathematics, Weizmann Institute of Science, Rehovot, Israel

    Smadar Shilo, Hagai Rossman & Eran Segal

  2. Department of Molecular Cell Biology, Weizmann Institute of Science, Rehovot, Israel

    Smadar Shilo, Hagai Rossman & Eran Segal

  3. Pediatric Diabetes Unit, Ruth Rappaport Children’s Hospital, Rambam Healthcare Campus, Haifa, Israel

    Smadar Shilo

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Correspondence to Eran Segal.

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Shilo, S., Rossman, H. & Segal, E. Axes of a revolution: challenges and promises of big data in healthcare. Nat Med 26, 29–38 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41591-019-0727-5

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