Perspectives on Big Data applications of health information

Abstract Recent advances on prospective monitoring and retrospective analysis of health information at national or regional level are generating high expectations for the application of Big Data technologies that aim to analyze at real time high-volumes and/or complex of data from healthcare delivery (e.g., electronic health records, laboratory and radiology information, electronic prescriptions, etc.) and citizens' lifestyles (e.g., personal health records, personal monitoring devices, social networks, etc.). Along these same lines, advances in the field of genomics are revolutionizing biomedical research, both in terms of data volume and prospects, as well as in terms of the social impact it entails. The potential of Big Data applications that consider all of the above levels of health information lies in the possibility of combining and integrating de-identified health information to allow secondary uses of data. This is the use and re-use of various sources of health information for purposes in addition to the direct clinical care of specific patients or the direct investigation of specific biomedical research hypotheses. Current applications include: epidemiological and pharmacovigilance studies, facilitating recruitment to randomized controlled trials, carrying out audits and benchmarking studies, financial and service planning, and ultimately supporting the generation of novel biomedical research outcomes.