Ben Rooney, The Wall Street Journal, Jan. 19, 2012
From the article: "Big Data—the ability to collect, process and interpret massive amounts of information—is one of today's most important technological drivers. While companies see it as a way of detecting weak market signals, one of the biggest potential areas of application for society is health care. Historically, health care has been delivered by one doctor looking at one patient with only the information the doctor has at that time. But how much better if the doctor had access to information about thousands, or even tens of thousands, of people? Acquiring medical data has, historically, been problematic. It is wrapped in layers of regulations and stringent safeguards and is expensive to collect… A huge upside of technology has been its democratization, giving ordinary access to information and tools that had previously been the preserve of the few. Industry after industry has seen the creative destruction wreaked upon it as Internet technologies pull down walls." Read more
