--- title: Big Data: How It's Starting to Change Health Care description: Medical leaders talk about the tangible ways that Big Data is changing medicine at Fortune Brainstorm Health. canonical: https://time.com/5208266/is-big-data-finally-changing-health-care/ author: Alexandra Sifferlin article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2018-03-20T23:52:00.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-02-23T19:43:04.544Z article:section: Health og:title: Big Data: How It's Starting to Change Health Care og:description: Medical leaders talk about the tangible ways that Big Data is changing medicine at Fortune Brainstorm Health. og:url: https://time.com/5208266/is-big-data-finally-changing-health-care/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt776e37149363afd8/69892b7a656a3f497bbd3ee2/pic.jpg?branch=production&width=894&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 894 og:image:height: 503 og:image:alt: PIC og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Big Data: How It's Starting to Change Health Care twitter:description: Medical leaders talk about the tangible ways that Big Data is changing medicine at Fortune Brainstorm Health. twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt776e37149363afd8/69892b7a656a3f497bbd3ee2/pic.jpg?branch=production&width=894&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # Is Big Data Finally Changing Health Care? > Sponsored content. 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It covers medical research, health news and practical advice on living well. #### Where can I get reliable health news by email? Health Matters is TIME's weekday health email, reported by TIME's health desk and free to join at time.com/newsletters. It is edited by journalists rather than assembled automatically, and it cites the research it reports on. #### Is Health Matters free? Yes. Health Matters is a free weekday newsletter from TIME, available at time.com/newsletters. #### Who reads TIME's Health Matters newsletter? Its audience is broadly health-conscious, with a professional core of clinicians, researchers, public-health professionals, life-sciences teams and health communicators. ### Sources * TIME Newsletters: [time.com/newsletters](/c/time-nl-health-2026q3/newsletters?i=008da2a4-e465-42ae-8936-3ff03a60242b&cr=time-nl-health-2026q3-v1) by [Alexandra Sifferlin](https://time.com/author/alexandra-sifferlin/) ## Alexandra Sifferlin Mar 20, 2018 11:52 PM UTC  by [Alexandra Sifferlin](https://time.com/author/alexandra-sifferlin/) ## Alexandra Sifferlin Mar 20, 2018 11:52 PM UTC LAGUNA NIGUEL, Calif.—For decades, innovators have been holding a candle for the potential of Big Data to one day revolutionize health care. Entrepreneurs have developed ways for people to track their own biological metrics, and for companies to use advances like artificial intelligence to provide more targeted care. Are we finally at the point where data can lead to tangible changes in health care? Or is still an unfulfilled promise? Medical experts at [Fortune magazine’s Brainstorm Health conference](https://www.fortuneconferences.com/brainstorm-health-2018/2018-agenda-overview/) discussed the promise and continued challenges of mining health data for insights. “It’s not about the data, it’s about what you do with the data in terms of making sense of it,” said Dr. Anil Jain, the Vice President and Chief Health Information Officer of IBM Watson Health, said on Tuesday in Laguna Niguel, Calif. Companies like IBM Watson Health and Flatiron Health are taking data from electronic health records, cleaning it up, and using that data to identify potential interventions and cost-saving opportunities. Even though electronic health records are often criticized for being time consuming and messy, Dr. Amy Abernethy, the Chief Medical Officer, Chief Scientific Officer, and Senior Vice President, of Oncology at Flatiron Health, says that what makes data from the documents helpful is that they offer a longitudinal context of a person’s medical history and life. “Big Data in context is going to be the most important data set in our future,” she says. One way this type of data could lead to better health outcomes is through federal collaboration, the panelist suggested. The U.S. government is currently trying to use data collected over decades to better address health issues facing Americans. According to Dr. Mona Siddiqui, Chief Data Officer at the U.S. Dept. of Health and Human Services, the federal government wants to collaborate more across government agencies in order to create better policies for better health that are based in the best data available. But right now, it’s hard to share data across government groups. “There’s a missed opportunity there to understand how are we using our resources and making policy decisions with the right data,” says Siddiqui. But more data sharing could be in the future: “Everyone wants another agency’s data and our job is to help facilitate that,” says Siddiqui. ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/5208266/is-big-data-finally-changing-health-care/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/5208266/is-big-data-finally-changing-health-care/"},"headline":"Is Big Data Finally Changing Health Care?","datePublished":"2018-03-20T23:52:00.000Z","dateModified":"2026-02-23T19:43:04.544Z","description":"Medical leaders talk about the tangible ways that Big Data is changing medicine at Fortune Brainstorm Health.","url":"https://time.com/5208266/is-big-data-finally-changing-health-care/","keywords":["Health Care","big data"],"thumbnailUrl":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt776e37149363afd8/69892b7a656a3f497bbd3ee2/pic.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Alexandra Sifferlin","jobTitle":null,"url":"https://time.com/author/alexandra-sifferlin/"}],"articleSection":"Health","image":[{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt776e37149363afd8/69892b7a656a3f497bbd3ee2/pic.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","width":1200,"height":675,"headline":"PIC","caption":"","creditText":"","representativeOfPage":true}],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"/section/health/","name":"Health"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"item":{"@id":"/tag/health-care/","name":"Health Care"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":3,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/5208266/is-big-data-finally-changing-health-care/","name":"Is Big Data Finally Changing Health Care?"}}]}] ```