Why Big Data Won't Cure Us

To cite this article: Gina Neff. The biggest challenge for the use of "big data" in health care is social, not technical. Data-intensive approaches to medicine based on predictive modeling hold enormous potential for solving some of the biggest and most intractable problems of health care. The challenge now is figuring out how people, both patients and providers, will actually use data in practice. "I FOUND THE BUZZ AS FEVERISHLY LOUD AROUND HEALTH INFORMATION INNOVATION AS IT WAS DURING MY RESEARCH ON THE FIRST DOT-COM BOOM." To understand how data-intensive solutions could have an impact on health care, our research team talked to frontline providers in impoverished and rural areas, technology enthusiasts in mobile health and health IT startups, clinicians and researchers in major research hospitals, Quantified Self members at data-driven meetup presentations of massive amounts of tracking data, and attendees at the growing number of conferences for health technology and innovation up and down both coasts. I found the buzz as feverishly loud around health information innovation as it was during my research on the first dot-com boom. One of our findings from this research seems at first blush so obvious that it is hard to believe it has been overlooked in the design and implementation of health-care innovation technologies.