WhatBig Datameans to me

Abstract

Across the world, there is much talk about Big Data and how it is going to change the way we do business. Conferences, workshops, and funding initiatives in Big Data attract hundreds to thousands of stakeholders. Interestingly, no two stakeholders would be likely to define Big Data in exactly the same way. An obvious definition is the appropriate description, integration and sustainability of very large datasets generated by high throughput experiments. Another equally accurate and obvious definition is a large collection of small disparate, unstructured datasets which, taken together, can be analyzed to find unusual trends. I would like to offer a somewhat different viewpoint, which expands and encompasses these two definitions. For me, Big Data represents the emergence of the digital enterprise—the ability for an organization to take full advantage of its digital assets—which collectively can be described as large amounts of data and more. In other words, lots of data is a sign that something more is going on that has yet to be fully articulated and understood. Pertinent to this audience is the health center, the biomedical research institution, the commercial health-related entity, or the government agency as the ‘enterprise,’ and digital assets … Correspondence to Dr Philip E Bourne, Innovation and Industry Alliances, University of California San Diego, 9500 Gilman Drive, La Jolla, CA 92093, USA; pbourne{at}ucsd.edu