There's no question that healthcare is an industry yearning for the advancements promised by Big Data analytics. Healthcare data is expected to grow between 1.2 to 2.4 exabytes per year — about 1,000 times the amount of data the human brain is capable of storing. This data is disparate and unstructured, making the extraction of useful information almost impossible. It is here that Big Data analytics promises to save the industry billions of dollars. This week Ricky Ribiero at Biz Tech Magazine joins the many voices investigating this trend. In his article, “Will Big Data Become the Big Savior of Health?” Ribiero illustrates how analytics can improve health outcomes and how tracking personal health, even down to the genome, can radically improve health. Ribiero cites a 2011 McKinsey & Co. report that states, “If US healthcare were to use big data creatively and effectively to drive efficiency and quality, the sector could create more than $300 billion in value every year.”

“While it’s true that analytics can reshape the way healthcare operates at an individual level,” Ribiero writes, “companies are hard at work trying to figure out how to leverage Big Data to improve health at the population level, too.”

Involution Studios' hGraph — the only open source visualization for your complete health metrics — is being featured this month in "Digital Diagnosis: A New Generation of Healthcare Technology" in EContent Magazine.

The column, written by Eileen Mullan, explores how apps and visualization services like hGraph can help cut through the hassle of going to the doctor. Mullan writes, "hGraph is [...] designed to increase awareness of the individual factors that can affect overall health. Basically, it gives you (and your doctor) a holistic view of your health. You can have your entire medical history in one place, just like that. Imagine what something like hGraph will do for the future of healthcare industry (and for the time you waste in the waiting room)?"