The use of big data in healthcare will not be like flipping a switch. Rather the use of data will inform models of our understanding of disease that will evolve as they're tested and applied to individuals, according to Eric Schadt, M.D., founding director of the Icahn Institute for Genomics and Multiscale Biology at New York's Mount Sinai Health System.
In an interview at McKinsey & Co., Schadt says questions will become easier to answer as more data is pulled together.
"We are at the very beginning stages of this revolution, but I think it's going to go very fast, because there's great maturity in the information sciences beyond medicine," he says.
The technologies and information-management techniques that Google, Amazon and Facebook use will be applied to medicine.
Wearables will bring a revolution in healthcare because they can provide a longitudinal record of various aspects of your health, he says--rather than the 10 minutes a year the average healthy person spends in a doctor's office. He predicts wearables will quickly become less recreational and more research- and ultimately clinical-grade.
Wearables will make patients partners in their care, help payers better understand risk and optimal treatments and generate lots of revenue for device makers, he says.
Technology will be one of the key drivers as primary care shifts from a fee-for-service system to one based on value, according to a recent PwC report.
At this point, however, wearables are not ready for prime time in clinical trials, according to Gartner Research Director Michael Shanler, who points to issues such as infrastructure and security.
To learn more:
- here's the interview