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Big Data, a clear challenge
Understanding the quality of our data and how it is generated is a critical step in assessing its potential.
Although in the digital era these processes are initially much simpler, the challenge is not to “collect for the sake of collecting” but to answer the following question: do we have the right resources to be able to make decisions based on them?
There are two very common and opposing situations when it comes to assessing the potential of data for real-world decision making:
1. Underestimation: actors that have been generating a large volume of data for years, but with a low perception of the value that this data can have for decision making. Often generated by bad experiences of use or by the establishment of expectations that are not aligned with reality.
2. Overestimation: players who assume that, because they have a large volume of data stored on their servers, they are in possession of a great asset when in fact the quality of the data is extremely low. In this case, it may originate from an incorrect database design to the aforementioned case of expectations not aligned with reality.
Whatever the case may be, both situations converge in the same challenge: to change the mindset in order to make definitive progress in the correct use of data for decision making.
To this end, it is necessary to propose a series of actions that will allow us to position ourselves in all the actors of the health ecosystem from the same starting point, namely:
– Understand that the term Big data encompasses not only the storage and the exploitation of the data, but also the collection.
– Evaluating if the data we generate is appropriate, if we have the required capabilities and if the available infrastructure meets the minimum requirements is mandatory and is aniterative process, not a one-off occasion.
– Quickly understand that the quality of the data we generate is directly proportional to the potential they will have and, therefore, the more solutions based on the same we will be able to take.
– To have tools based on the correct use of data that allow us to generate a positive impact on those who matter most to us, which, in our case, are the patients.
