Informatics and Mass Data Analysis in Digital Health

Abstract

This chapter reviews the current status of data in the context of digital health and exploring the huge increase in data acquisition in medicine with accompanying move from paper to the Electronic Health Record. The roll out of Electronic Health Records has been filled with challenges and detracting from the physician patient relationship taking the focus away from patients to the technology. But this move to digital information is the gateway to the appliance of science at the point of care but this is dependent on capture of structured codified data or the ability to convert narrative into structured computer readable information. The section offers examples of the benefits in digitizing the patient record and potential opportunities for automating the application of clinical knowledge at the point of care. The key to providing patients with the care they want and clinicians want to give is using this digitized data to offer actionable intelligence and insights at the point of care that make best use of the latest research data to drive the most appropriate treatment Additionally the digitization with new analytics tools applied with automated agents and artificial intelligence will increase the development of disease understanding and opening the door to truly personalized medical care and treatment.