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ABSTRACT The US health care system is rapidly adopting electronic health records, which will dramatically increase the quantity of clinical data that are available electronically. Simultaneously, rapid progress has been made in clinical analytics-techniques for analyzing large quantities of data and gleaning new insights from that analysis-which is part of what is known as big data. As a result, there are unprecedented opportunities to use big data to reduce the costs of health care in the United States. We present six use cases-that is, key examples-where some of the clearest opportunities exist to reduce costs through the use of big data: high-cost patients, readmissions, triage, decompensation (when a patient's condition worsens), adverse events, and treatment optimization for diseases affecting multiple organ systems. We discuss the types of insights that are likely to emerge from clinical analytics, the types of data needed to obtain such insights, and the infrastructure-analytics, algorithms, registries, assessment scores, monitoring devices, and so forth-that organizations will need to perform the necessary analyses and to implement changes that will improve care while reducing costs. Our findings have policy implications for regulatory oversight, ways to address privacy concerns, and the support of research on analytics.
The cost of health care in the United States is high, nearly twice that in most other developed countries,1 and it continues to grow rapidly. The unsustainable projected trajec- tory of US health care costs has led to calls for improving the value of health care.2 However, the Affordable Care Act-the most substantial policy reform in US health care in decades- has been criticized for not doing enough to con- tain costs.3
As health reform progresses, one key dynamic of the US health care system isthe rapid adoption of electronic health records (EHRs). The growth of EHRs will make it possible to access unprece- dented amounts of clinical data and offers the potential for cost savings.4 The extent of those cost savings is still to be determined,5 but EHRs' value in increasing health care providers' access to patients' records is not in question.
In other industries, companies have been very successful at using big data to improve their effi- ciency.6 By big data, we refer to the high volume, variety, and potential for the rapid accumulation of data...