In the past, health care was completely responsive. A patient would come in with a particular malady, a doctor would diagnose it as best as possible, and then they would set out on a course of treatment. Now, physicians are making a greater attempt to anticipate and react to health related issues, before they even rise to the level of requiring a clinical visit.
For many doctors, Big Data can be an important part of those efforts. One of the primary issues in modern health administration is the sheer amount of infrastructure and scheduling necessary. Unlike the past, when a house visit could be made on a particular day, modern medicine necessitates a level of administration that can often be cumbersome. That is where analytics can come in.
One of the problems that doctors face is coordinating records across multiple systems. Many things are done on paper and have to be scanned or filed by hand. By using the FileMaker service, however, they can better organize data and treat patients more effectively.
There are ancillary benefits as well. By parsing the information and identifying trends, a physician can see which patients are likely to come back and how often, knowledge which can speed up their care process. In addition, they can pinpoint factors that are leading to recurrences, and note national health patterns before they reach the level of crises. It could even reduce the incidence of chronic diseases like diabetes and cancer, which tend to occur relatively more frequently in particular populations.
As care gets more specialized, it will be fascinating to watch how doctors are able to implement new database technology into the age-old process of making people feel better.