2012 Sixth International Conference on Innovative Mobile and Internet Services in Ubiquitous Computing
Big Data on the Internet of Things
An example for the E-health
Martín Díaz, Gonzalo Juan
CEO, cubenube
Madrid, Spain
e-mail: g.martin@cubenube.com
Abstract—How the No Relational Data Bases are one of
the key factors (among the architecture & infrastructure
that supports them) of the complete develop of the IoT,
and how they must lead the way to the Web of Things.
An example for the e-health.
Keywords-Big Data; Internet of Things; Web of
Things; NOSQL; e-health
I. INTRODUCTION
The inclusion of architectures based on Big Data in the
systems and platforms of the Internet of Things is therefore
important especially for the e-health sector.
The human being is the device that generates more
information with more critical value. A person is able to
generate 1TB of information in one day, millions of data
that could be used in various fields and some of those data
begin to be used in marketing or in social networks,
however in the e-health the possibilities offered by these
data are not exploited yet.
Within the space of research, study and development of
the internet of things, and in the way of technologies and
trends that will lead to become the web of things (including
some as the changing to IPv6, advances in M2M
communications and semantic technologies), the data that
support and will sustain this entire ecosystem are rarely
mentioned.
You can read about the design of the architectures,
services on all levels and communications, but very little
about how to store the data, as well as how to access to them
and how to be processed. These tasks are lost in the cloud of
definitions and specifications that are presented, discussed
and developed.
And the current general models based on common
databases (mostly relational) are not sufficient, it`s not that
they are not required, they are simply not enough.
978-0-7695-4684-1/12 $26.00 © 2012 IEEE
DOI 10.1109/IMIS.2012.198
Oikawa Lucas, Alberto Ryuga
CTO, cubenube
Madrid, Spain
e-mail: a.oikawa@cubenube.com
Therefore the technologies and architectures known as
Big Data were developed to store, process and manage
higher volumes of data in less time or even in real time.
Big Data is a system that lets digitize large amounts of
information and combine it with existing databases. Of all
sectors and applications where systems and technological
solutions evolve towards the Internet of the Future, e-health
might be the application sector where the methods and
technologies to be applied to the data may have a greater
impact.
A greater impact due to the large spread of information
that exists in this sector. Public and Private Institutions
which provide health care, drug companies and patients are
the biggest beneficiaries of the implementation of this new
concept.
Not just talking about the security of data, we discuss the
storage capacity, the need to them across multiple platforms
and methods and the potential importance of thinking about
data: they will improve researches and treatments, they will
let to make decisions with solid knowledge base, they will
improve care, progress, savings in management and
monitoring.
II. BIG DATA AND E-HEALTH
Due to the demand for applications and technological
advances that have been developed in recent years, it is
logical that the information processing mechanisms have
evolved, but it is more logical to search for new forms of
storage.
Millions of essential data are lost every day due to
traditional storage technologies, and this doesn´t let to adapt
the health service to the needs of patients or diseases, since
nowadays there are no tools able to store and manage so
much information, although the technology needed exists.
The current architectures and systems used in the sector
do not allow managing greater volumes of data and even
less in reasonable time. To allow a mass data storage in real
time technologies as the Big Data are needed.
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 The logical problem (emerged a few years ago) is
whether the applications, the medicine and how to collect
information have been adapted and evolved with
technology, and why storage technologies have not done it,
being so far a limitation for the other. The most critical
element that prevented the development of the other, due to
restrictions posed by, may be solved by using Big Data,
since it will provide mechanisms to improve all processes
and stages in the diagnosis, clinical trial, patient monitoring,
etc.
An example of the possibilities offered by the use of Big
Data are the social networks where they are demonstrating
their ability to store and manage millions of data in record
time.
This development and improvement of Big Data
Technologies has opened up a gateway to its introduction in
e-health, and also is becoming increasingly urgent to initiate
its integration, as, simultaneously, other technologies are
being developed to solve many of the problems in the sector
(as tele-monitoring, tracing and labeling of patients, staff,
drugs, equipment, etc..) that will be generating even more
data.
Picture 1: Actual data structure.
In the healthcare of the future it is necessary to manage
more and better, both patients and supplies, whether internal
or external. Furthermore, the use of Big Data technologies
together with concepts such as Health Cloud will allow to
change the data structure of the sector, focused on health
centers or institutions, into one more focused on patients as
individuals with a track record that are attended by centers
in a time stamp.
One of the strong points of the Big Data is that there are
various specifications, which can be adapted to the
particular needs of the different fields of the e-health, to
give very specific and efficient solutions.
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Picture 2: Future data structure in e-health with nodes.
A. Clinical Management.
One of the problems in the current model of clinical
management is the organization in the health centers.
Therefore, using Big data aims to improve not only the
organization of health centers, but also for cases, such as
chronic patients who need continuous monitoring, to
monitor them all the time and store the data, getting several
parameters through different devices (invasive or
noninvasive) to always ensure the well-being and the
patient control.
Thus, according to measures taken and the individual
specifications the doctor has ordered to the patient, alarms,
control measures and citations can be generated. All these
data may be available to medical equipments in real time
through any technological device, smart phone, tablet, etc.
Currently, all the available information of a patient when
he is going to be attended, in most cases, is the medical
record of previous actions from the same specific center as
well as some vital signs measured by monitors (respiratory
rate, blood pressure, temperature and oxygen saturation).
While there are many medical devices that monitor or
record data, they are not connected to a single point where
they can be stored and managed.
With the technologies and equipment developed and
other devices in development, it may however have plenty
of data from:
• The storage of data of vital signs measured.
• Actions taken by the medical team (dosages of
drugs, etc...)
• The location of the patient at the center through the
use of radiofrequency tags.
• Control of equipment used, it`s location,
weathering and maintenance.
 • Location of the center staff and pharmaceuticals
supplies, with corresponding improvements in
management (savings), good use, control and
logistics.
In the area of clinical management, the main benefits
that the use of Big Data technology will provide are:
• With detailed information about treatments for
patients, it can be determined which treatments are
more effective for patients or patient groups.
• Decisions will be made supported by data analysis
and medical treatment mistakes will be detected.
• The level of performance of medical professionals,
optimal processes and institutions of higher
performance will be known.
• There will be new segmentation and predictive
models according to patient profiles.
• It will facilitate the automation of the payment
system and cost control in the administration of the
system.
• Transmission of information to the right people at
the appropriate time and manner to improve
decision-making.
B. Diagnosis
In many occasions, obtaining a diagnosis is extended in
time because the various tests conducted in the patient
cannot be stored in real time to reach the medical team; on
other occasions, even having the results of these tests, there
is not common access to different health centers or
sometimes even in the same center, that make the
probability of losses and increases on waiting time to get the
results of the tests done, which ultimately will end up by
increasing the time to reach a patient's diagnosis.
Through the Big Data technologies all health centers
could have access to the information for each patient
regardless of where the test was made. Moreover, the tests
would be stored in real time, allowing making decisions
from the instant that the test has been done to the patient.
C. Library
Within medicine there are countless branches, studies
and research, and nowadays it is impossible to access to that
information because of the limitations presented by the
storage systems, but with the use of Big Data all this
information could be stored, allowing impossible or very
expensive searches before, in a few seconds, facilitating the
doctors to have all that knowledge so they can perform their
jobs in a more efficient and productive way.
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D. Collecting data for researching.
Another major problems the medicine faces is that it is
capable of generating a large amount of data, but it is unable
to work with such a large volume of information due to
storage systems are limited, and the time of treatment of
storage data is very costly. This causes that a lot of data
already collected cannot be treated due to the limitation of
the system. But with Big Data, the storage and processing
times are dramatically reduced allowing using all the
information already collected.
E. Data Analysis
The processing of stored data and statistics requires a
large amount of time, given their diversification and
volume. But if you are able to analyze all data with time
cost close to zero, study and further analysis will be
facilitated.
In fact, one of the biggest advantages of the Big Data
technologies oriented to the e-health is to store the data of
all medical devices which are "associated" with patients and
the medical team, to examine their values later, allowing to
analyze the entire sector (medical equipment, research,
insurance and administration), the actions carried out and
make decisions subsequently or study their effect.
F. Telemonitoring
Telemonitoring allows tracking the health status of the
patient from their own home by the health personnel in
charge of care of patients (and especially of those patients
that are chronic), avoiding displacement of the patient and
improving the efficiency of healthcare processes.
Using a cloud health based on NOSQL technologies
focused on the patient will let to store all monitoring data
both inside and outside his home, allowing warning of
changes in health status, alarms, preventive actions and
especially cost savings because it will decrease the number
of emergency visits and time of hospital stay of them.
III. CONCLUSIONS
The use of Big Data is definitely an opportunity to create
data nodes interconnected that will allow to store large
amounts of new data and unify them with the old ones, in
addition to process and form an ecosystem of data nodes
that gives information services according to the profile of
the institution or person concerned, by allowing information
to focus on patients and their real records.
In short, it will allow to store what has happened and to
access to it transparently to all involved.