European Observatory for Health Systems and Policies: harnessing big data for health

04 Apr 2017 | News
An article in the latest edition of WHO Europe’s Eurohealth assess the benefits of big data in healthcare and how policy changes in Europe might affect patients, policy-makers, providers and scientists.

The article acknowledges the challenges of integrating new technologies into the existing healthcare system, in particular in relation to privacy and the lack of integration of government networks. Taking the Innovative Medicines Initiative’s Big Data for better outcomes (BD4BO) programme as a starting point, the authors discuss the future of big data initiatives for Alzheimer’s disease, leukaemia and cardiovascular disease.

From the report: “Linking existing databases is seen as key to unlocking the potential of big data to revolutionise health care. Shared electronic health records and provider benchmarking can improve the quality of care, while linked databases are deemed enablers to support the transformation towards value-based health care. The wealth of collected data allows researchers to answer questions that are of high relevance for policy-makers, patients and providers. However, data privacy concerns pose a challenge to the integration of data sources”.

Read the full report

 

 

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