Evelyn Hernndez Galvn

Miguel Galicia
November 20, 2017
Big Data: The importance in clinical trials
A primary objective of clinical trials is gaining knowledge from studying a subset
of patients which can be applied to a much wider group to improve care. In order to do
that, we need to collect and analyze a large amount of data which is quite difficult with
the traditional analytics techniques. However, with Big Data we can collect all the data
produced, analysis it so we can give meaning to all that data, and the most important,
applying all that to improve the effectiveness of patient care systems and ROI of
business processes.

One of the most important parts of a clinical trial is the communication patient-
physician. In particular, the patient should be able to communicate all the symptoms that
he is experimenting, but is common that the patients present some sort of struggle to
communicate them to clinicians. In that case, researchers have developed patient-
reported outcome (PRO) tools (Patel, Klasnja, Hartzler, 2012), such tools capture
retrospective data intended for clinicians to review. In contrast, real-time tracking tools
could improve health outcomes and communication with clinicians, while also
enhancing patients symptom management.

In short, real-time tracking tools increase exponentially the amount of collecting

data that a PRO could even get, so the physician would be able to get a whole new
perspective of what their patients are experimenting.

Big Data offers the tantalizing potential of solving the ongoing dilemma of subject
recruitment. It is a real problem to identify appropriate patients for clinical trials, for
instance, 37% of clinical trials fail to reach their recruitment goals, and 11% of sites fail
to recruit a single patient (Tufts CDD, 2016). In contrast with the real-time tracking tools,
here the privacy represents an issue, one that can be addressed with the
implementation of some databases as Death Index or Medicaid (Catanese, 2016).

To sum up, If we could be able to used responsibly, Big Data can help us find the
increasingly difficult-to-identify patients and reach out to them in an efficient way, and in

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a very regulated environment to tell them that there is a trial opportunity that they might
be interested in.

Undoubtedly, the use of Big Data would help to reduce healthcare spending. It
was normal that the reason of a patient treatment decision was just the physician
judgment, but in the last few years, there is a new reason, which involves systematically
reviewing clinical data, so treatment decisions are based on the best available
information. In other words, this new reason for elect treatment would save thousands
of dollars in surgery complications or in the recovery time that we spent in the hospital.
McKinsey estimates that if the potential of big data is fully exploited across the
healthcare value delivery chain, it could account for $300 billion to $450 billion in
reduced healthcare spending in the U.S. alone (Kayyali, Knott & Kuiken, 2013).

In the same way, the healthcare market has its own revenue, as we see in the
R&R Market Research (2016) report where the healthcare analytics market alone is
estimated to grow at a rate of 23.7% from 2012 to 2017 to reach $ 10.8 billion, so this is
a really good business for both sides.

The investors in Big Data technologies are not just the hospitals, even the
industries of IT are allocating some of there annual budget to the development and
research, just as IBM or startups as Truven Health. The investment in this technologies
are the one that define a hospital as a first class or not. Just as the big companies make
their investment, the patient need to invest in mHealth gadgets and mobile applications
that synchronise everything.

At the end, everybody make their own investment and contribution, so the true
measure of ROI in healthcare is being able to demonstrate an improvement in patient
outcomes.

In conclusion, the use of Big Data in healthcare has a brilliant future. The only
barrier that we need to pass is the privacy issue, the day that we pass it we could enjoy
all the benefits that the implementation of this kind of technologies could bring to us.
Furthermore, with the use of Big Data in healthcare we could defeat one of the biggest
barriers that medical care have always been struggle, and is: Worldwide medical data
up at date.

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 References

Catanese, L., (2016). Big Data in clinical trials: Promise and pitfalls. The CenterWatch

Monthly, 8, 23. https://www.centerwatch.com/news-online/2016/08/15/big-data-

clinical-trials-promise-pitfalls/

Kayyali, B., Knott, D., Van Kuiken, S., (2013). The big-data revolution in US heath care:

Accelerating value and innovation. McKinsey&Company. https://

www.mckinsey.com/industries/healthcare-systems-and-services/our-insights/

the-big-data-revolution-in-us-health-care

Mayo, C. S., Matuszak, M. M., Schipper, M. J., Jolly, S., Hayman, J. A., & Ten Haken, R.

K. (2017). Big Data in Designing Clinical Trials: Opportunities and

Challenges. Frontiers in Oncology, 7, 187. http://doi.org/10.3389/fonc.

2017.00187.

Patel, R. A., Klasnja, P., Hartzler, A., Unruh, K. T., & Pratt, W. (2012). Probing the

benefits of real-time tracking during cancer care. AMIA Annual Symposium

Proceedings, 2012, 13401349. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/

PMC3540467/

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