For months every day, the excess flab on her stomach worried IT professional Deblina. Nothing worked for her, not even the diet chart prepared by the nutritionist.
Then, she downloaded the Google Fit app. Now she goes for jogging every morning, with the app suggesting how many hours she should be at it and how long she actually has.
What makes the Google app keep tabs on Deblina’s exercise regime is the Big Data analyst, which is playing a crucial role in modern health care across the world.
Ruth B. Walkup, interim health attaché of the US department of health and human services, explains: “Whenever we search something on Google, we are creating data. Decision makers on health use that data to prevent illnesses and be responsive to epidemics like Flu or Ebola.”
Big Data had played an important role during the Ebola outbreak of 2014.
Started in 2001 by Doug Laney, Big Data is increasingly helping the Centre for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and World Health Organisation with tabulations. Both these organisations earlier relied on traditional tools to detect epidemics.
As world population and life expectancy increase, Big Data is playing a major role in health care, helping governments with data and enabling decisions accordingly.
A senior Big Data analyst in Bangalore, explains: “For instance, when an expert studies separate data on smokers and on people suffering from cancer, Big Data helps in correlating the two. So, the expert can derive that 70 per cent or say 80 per cent people who smoke regularly eventually have cancer. This correlation will be very difficult to make unless someone knows big data methodologies.”
Some of the areas that have benefited from Big Data are insurance companies, patient data management, real-time monitoring of patients and advanced research and development, says big data analyst.
“Areas such as genomics, cancer research and vaccine development typically need huge computation, storage and capability to visualise data. Big Data has made all things possible,” he adds.
Where do experts get Big Data to analyse diseases?
Doctors and data analyst look at mobile phone calls, tweets, apps (Health Map, Google Fit, Fit Bit, 7 Minute Workout, Mi Fit, Pedometer and so), field reports, airline bookings, statistics and government announcements
How does India use Big Data in medical research?
The Big Data analyst answers: “India is slowly and steadily adopting Cloud and Big Data analytics in health care. But the government’s budgetary allocation towards health care is only 6 per cent and one of the lowest in the world. Adoption is robust and growing in the private health care sector, but much needs to be done in state-funded facilities.”
In 2014, when Ebola broke out in parts of West Africa, Big Data played a huge role.
“GlobalPost” had reported how a Swedish non-profit organiser used mobile phone data to map population movement. Such data helped medical experts correctly predict where the virus could hit next.
As the costs of Cloud adoption fall and compute and storage become cheaper, Big Data analysts see more and more health care agencies, hospitals, universities and pharmaceutical companies move their workloads to the Cloud.
So, IT professionals like Deblina can now relax and look to the Google app for ways to tone down.