Health IT

The body in bytes: Medical images as a source of healthcare big data (infographic)

The amount of healthcare data that exists is growing faster than ever and poses both an opportunity and challenge to the industry. While much this data is coming from files held in electronic health records, even more of it appears to be coming from image archiving and communications applications. This infographic put together by data […]

By Deanna Pogorelc on March 07, 2013 9:33 am

The amount of healthcare data that exists is growing faster than ever and poses both an opportunity and challenge to the industry.

While much this data is coming from files held in electronic health records, even more of it appears to be coming from image archiving and communications applications.

This infographic put together by data storage company NetApp shows where the fastest-growing kind of healthcare data is coming from (according to Bridgehead Software’s International Healthcare Data Management Survey (PDF) from 2011). Somewhere between 60 percent and 80 percent of data is estimated to be unstructured and exists in the form of images, video and email. But this kind of data can be just as important to share as structured data because of its value in helping doctors make the most informed treatment decisions.

Here’s a better look at what makes up that mass amount of data: