Question

The importance of big data doesn't revolve around how much data you have, but what you do with it. You can take data from any source and analyze it to find answers that enable cost reductions, time reductions, new product development and optimized offerings, and smart decision making. When you combine big data with high-powered analytics, you can accomplish business-related tasks such as:

• Determining root causes of failures, issues, and defects in near-real time.
• Generating coupons at the point of sale based on the customer's buying habits.
• Recalculating entire risk portfolios in minutes.
• Detecting fraudulent behavior before it affects your organization.

In your post give an example of an actual or potential application of big data or data mining in your own organization or an organization you are familiar with. Discuss and share this information with your classmates.

In responding to your peers, select responses that use big data or a data mining application that is different from your own. Based on your readings from Chapter 21 describe how the application meets the criteria of being big data or data mining. Consider how big data or data mining could be applied to the final project case study. Support your initial posts and response posts with scholarly sources cited in APA style.

Answer 1

Before discovering how big data can work for your business, you should first understand where it comes from. The sources for big data generally fall into one of three categories:

1).Streaming data :

This category includes data that reaches your IT systems from a web of connected devices, often part of the IoT. You can analyze this data as it arrives and make decisions on what data to keep, what not to keep and what requires further analysis..

2)Social media data:

The data on social interactions is an increasingly attractive set of information, particularly for marketing, sales and support functions. It's often in unstructured or semi structured forms, so it poses a unique challenge when it comes to consumption and analysis.

3).Publicly available sources :

Massive amounts of data are available through open data sources like the US government’s data.gov, the CIA World Factbook or the European Union Open Data Portal.

The final step in making big data work for your business is to research the technologies that help you make the most of big data and big data analytics. Consider:

• Cheap, abundant storage.
• Faster processors.
• Affordable open source, distributed big data platforms, such as Hadoop.
• Parallel processing, clustering, MPP, virtualization, large grid environments, high connectivity and high through puts.
• Cloud computing and other flexible resource allocation arrangements.

For example:

Electronic Health Records (EHRs):

It’s the most widespread application of big data in medicine. Every patient has his own digital record which includes demographics, medical history, allergies, laboratory test results etc. Records are shared via secure information systems and are available for providers from both public and private sector. Every record is comprised of one modifiable file, which means that doctors can implement changes over time with no paperwork and no danger of data replication.

EHRs can also trigger warnings and reminders when a patient should get a new lab test or track prescriptions to see if a patient has been following doctors’ orders.

Although EHR are a great idea, many countries still struggle to fully implement them. U.S. has made a major leap with 94% of hospitals adopting EHRs according to this HITECH research, but the EU still lags behind. However, an ambitious directive drafted by European Commission is supposed to change it: by 2020 centralized European health record system should become a reality.

Kaiser Permanente is leading the way in the U.S., and could provide a model for the EU to follow. They’ve fully implemented a system called HealthConnect that shares data across all of their facilities and makes it easier to use EHRs. A McKinsey report on big data healthcare states that “The integrated system has improved outcomes in cardiovascular disease and achieved an estimated $1 billion in savings from reduced office visits and lab tests.”