High-Risk Patients and Utilization of Primary Care in the US Veterans Affairs Health System

Authored by Center member, Dr. Said Ibrahim.

Data are the new gold. This aphorism often describes the role of data-centric, platform-based industries, such as Google, Amazon, and Facebook, in the US $3 trillion health care industry. Big data analytic technologies such as machine learning, data science, and artificial intelligence (AI) are inspiring algorithm-based decision-making that promise to transform health care from a service industry to an information industry. Big data analytics derive power and potential value from the near real-time aggregation and analysis of vast volumes of data mined from multiple sources, creating predictive models, and providing actionable information to inform health care decisions. Big data are both a product and a function of technology and ever-growing analytic and computational power.