A Survey on the Utilization of Big Data in the Healthcare Sector and the Demand for Integrated Data

Abstract

Objectives: To investigate the status of secondary data and big data platform utilization and the demand for integrated data in the health care sector.Methods: An online survey was conducted using a structured questionnaire targeting members of six academic societies in the healthcare field. A total of 220 researchers responded to the survey.Results: 88.2% of respondents said they had experience using secondary data sources in the healthcare field, and 19.0% responded that they had experience linking data using the healthcare big data platform. Among the data in the health and medical field, the most used dataset was health insurance claims data, and if linking between dataset, the most desired linked data type is ‘National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey-Health Insurance Claims Data–National Health Examination-Death Information’. The advantages of linked data on big data platforms were ‘large volume of big data or representative’, ‘diversity of data’, and ‘long-term follow-up’. The major items requiring improvement were ‘delay in time to provide data’, ‘limitation of data provision range’, and ‘low linkage rate between dataset’.Conclusions: To promote the use of linked data in the health care field, comprehensive efforts are needed, including rapid data provision, improvement of the combination rate, standardization of data, and establishment of ethical guidelines.