When you put big data to work, results can be beautiful. Especially when those results are as impactful as saving lives. Here are four best practice examples of how big data is being used in healthcare to improve, and often save, lives.
Aerocrine improves asthma care with near-real-time data
Millions of asthma sufferers worldwide depend on Aerocrine monitoring devices to diagnose and treat their disease effectively. But those devices are sensitive to small changes in ambient environment. That’s why Aerocrine is using a cloud analytics solution to boost reliability.
Virginia Tech advances DNA sequencing with cloud big data solution
DNA sequencing analysis is a form of life sciences research that has the potential to lead to a wide range of medical and pharmaceutical breakthroughs. However, this type of analysis requires supercomputing resources and Big Data storage that many researchers lack. Working through a grant provided by the National Science Foundation in partnership with Microsoft, a team of computer scientists at Virginia Tech addressed this challenge by developing an on-demand, cloud-computing model using the Windows Azure HDInsight Service. By moving to an on-demand cloud computing model, researchers will now have easier, more cost-effective access to DNA sequencing tools and resources, which could lead to even faster, more exciting advancements in medical research.
The Grameen Foundation expands global humanitarian efforts with cloud BI
Global nonprofit Grameen Foundation is dedicated to helping as many impoverished people as possible, which means continually improving the way Grameen works. To do so, it needed an ongoing sense of its programs’ performance. Grameen and Microsoft brought people and technology together to create a BI solution that helps program managers and financial staff: glean insights in minutes, not hours; expand services to more people; and make the best use of the foundation’s funding.
Ascribe transforms healthcare with faster access to information
Ascribe, a leading provider of IT solutions for the healthcare industry, wanted to help clinicians identify trends and improve services by supplying faster access to information. However, exploding volumes of structured and unstructured data hindered insight. To solve the problem, Ascribe designed a hybrid-cloud solution with built-in business intelligence (BI) tools based on Microsoft SQL Server 2012 and Windows Azure. Now, clinicians can respond faster with self-service BI tools.
Learn more about Microsoft’s big data solutions.