Finding the Missing Link for Big Biomedical Data | Law and Medicine | JAMA | JAMA Network

I t has been argued that big data will enable efficiencies and accountability in health care.1,2 However, to date, other industries have been far more successful at obtaining value from large-scale integration and analysis of heterogeneous data sources. What these industries have figured out is that big data becomes transformative when disparate data sets can be linked at the individual person level. In contrast, big biomedical data are scattered across institutions and intentionally isolated to protect patient privacy. Both technical and social challenges to linking these data must be addressed before big biomedical data can have their full influence on health care. It is this linkage challenge that we address in this Viewpoint. Political campaigns, government, and businesses use big data to learn everything possible about their constituents or customers, and then apply advanced computation to hone strategy. The 2012 Obama campaign identified, approached, and influenced swing voters u

I t has been argued that big data will enable efficiencies and accountability in health care.1,2 However, to date, other industries have been far more successful at obtaining value from large-scale integration and analysis of heterogeneous data sources. What these industries have figured out is that big data becomes transformative when disparate data sets can be linked at the individual person level. In contrast, big biomedical data are scattered across institutions and intentionally isolated to protect patient privacy. Both technical and social challenges to linking these data must be address