Technology has become a vital part of our daily lives, and the adoption of new technologies has drastically altered our daily lives. Technology has made our lives more comfortable and efficient, regardless of our age, level of knowledge, or even the reason for utilizing it. We are experiencing technological wonders in the shape of smartphones, Internet of Things (IoT), robotic surgery, and applications that use Artificial Intelligence (AI). We are shifting from regular technology use to more complicated technologies which are connected via a powerful internet and frequently generate vast amounts of data. With the growth of data from numerous mobile networks, cloud computing systems, health applications, and electronic medical records, there is an increased need for a comprehensive approach to maintaining and updating information. The expanding data and information of the patients and the relevant health care activities are getting more challenging due to the speed, amount, and complexity of the data. Muni Kumar and Manjula (2014) reported that the health care facilities generate an abundant amount of data each day that is centered around the patients, medicines, treatments, diseases, research and other similar factors. To manage this data more efficiently, modern health care units choose to digitize the data related to patients. Worldwide, medical institutes shifted from the traditional paper-based medical file to the electronic medical record, providing help in managing patient information, lab tests, medications, and medical imaging.
Electronic Medical Records (EMR) are considered to be an essential, rich platform containing patient information. EMR captures all demographic data, lab results, radiology images and free-text notations. That collective information is extremely useful as a database for many longitudinal studies. Mining data from EMR can help understand disease signs and symptoms and the progression of a particular disease. It also offers improvement in clinical knowledge and understanding of a specific phenomenon and assists in clinical trials and disease management and therapeutic trials (Coorevits, 2013; Effoe, 2016). Further, it assists in predicting disease progression, comorbidities and mortalities (Paxton, 2013; Benjamin, 2017).
Data comes from various sources, including electronic medical files, home sensors, and wearable devices. As such, it will generate a massive amount of data known as big data. Big data refers to massive data, although the term has no universally accepted definition. The oldest definition is provided by Laney (2001), who observed that (big) data was growing in three different dimensions, namely: volume, velocity, and variety (known as the three V’s). This definition has been expanded by Demchenko, Zhao, Grosso, Wibisono & De Laat (2012), who define big data by five V’s: volume, velocity, variety, veracity and value. Volume refers to the amount of data, which is massively generated and requires a unique storage format. Data velocity means the high speed of data generated from different resources. Variety of data means the complexity of datathat varies from numerical data to text notation or in the form of, from numerical data to text notation or a (radiological) image. Finally, vacity refers to the accuracy of the data and value evaluates the quality of data (Srikanth Thudumu, 2020).
Wang (2016) expands on the idea of big data and defines it as a set of data that cannot be analyzed by a standard computerized method. Big data is segregated in the type of structured, unstructured and semi-structure forms of the data. The structured data can be stored, accessed and processed in a specific format. It is an already-segregated and dedicated form of easily retrievable and readable data. The unstructured data is not specific in its form, as it was discussed for the structured form of the data. As stated by Wu and Lin (2018), this type of data possesses multiple challenges in terms of processing as well as retrieving valuable information from it. A typical example of this form of data is the data that comes from heterogeneous sources, meaning a combination of text files, images and videos. Data heterogeneity is due to the mixing of structured and unstructured data, having its roots in various platforms that are either quantitative or qualitative. The quantitative sources of data include laboratory tests, images, sensor data and gene array. The qualitative data sources include demographics and textual information (Shelton, Poorthuis, Graham & Zook, 2014). One of the critical challenges in this regard is related to the accuracy and trustworthiness of the data since the credibility of the data may be challenged as it is from unmanaged sources. To get the ultimate benefits out of big data technology, health care systems need to analyze the unstructured and semi-structured data coherently. The extraction and retrieval of big data may be subject to challenges related to social and legal technicalities. These social and legal issues might be generated due to problems associated with data ownership, privacy, identification and governance (Mittelstadt & Floridi, 2016).
1.1 Big Data and Health care System within the UAE
The UAE health care system is operated by government-funded health services and the rapidly growing private health sector. The standards of the health services provided by both sectors are acceptable. The healthcare industry of the UAE is realizing the potential of big data analysis and has the capability to transform the health care system. According to Bani-issa, Eldeirawi & Al Tawil (2014), such developments are the inactive lifestyle among the residents, leading to an increase in chronic diseases such as diabetes. Several regions in the Middle East, including the UAE, have undergone or are considering implementing health care insurance, which then needs to perform an analysis of the big volume of health data generated from claims. The UAE introduced a standardized insurance coding system to deal with the situation and improve process efficiency. The insurers in the UAE are pricing premiums based on little historical data due to the lack of big data analysis tools and the sophisticated nature of the big data. The availability of big data will enable insurers to paint a clear picture of health care in the region. It will allow them to accurately predict the validity of the claims (Hamidi et al., 2014).
The UAE vision is to provide world-class healthcare by 2021 and the government's direction is to foster innovation in the healthcare system to be able to achieve its vision. Many strategies have been explored to ensure that people are provided with a high-quality care system and to ensure the implementation of SDGs, particularly Goal 3 (ensuring healthy lives and promoting well-being for all ages) (UAE Government, 2020).
With advanced technology in the UAE, and smart government and public service, big data helps in providing a big database within the country, especially in the healthcare sector, which can assist in a better understanding of population health and provide the required service. To be able to achieve the government vision of providing world-class healthcare and ensure maintaining sustainability in delivering health and well-being to everyone living in the UAE, this can be facilitated by mining big data and understanding the data to be able to provide better services and health plans to ensure a healthier, happier community. Despite the availability of big data in the UAE and the potential to utilize big data as a government looking for innovation and using big data, there are limitations and a lack of published research on big data mining in the UAE, in different sectors and especially the health care system. Although, there is no standardized government approach and policy regarding big data mining or storing. However, there is a big amount of data generated on a daily basis among different entities within the UAE. In terms of consensus, the UAE open data policy was launched in 2018 as per the UN eGovernment Survey (2018) to help access data without restriction. By 2020, not all data is accessible and there remains restrictions on available data from the entities (2021 UAE, 2021).
A lot of research in the literature review provides agreement about big data mining and its beneficial role toward enhancing the health care system, yet there is still no unified process or solutions for big data mining and how to make it possible. This research will help understand the importance of harnessing big data and utilizing it to enhance the health care system and identify the challenges and limitations of harnessing big data.
1.2 Big Data and Sustainable Development Goals
The UN developed a 2030 strategy to fight poverty, ensure equity among people and address the global challenges through 17 sustainable goals (United Nations, 2015). Policymakers, decision-makers, and investors, according to Wu (2018), need authentic, accurate, and real-time data to adopt the proper policies and decisions in order to accomplish the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). They then need to be able to check the impact of the policy, which can be achieved through the analysis of big data from different sources. Similarly, as stated in a report released by United Nations (2018), the big data revolution can contribute to SDG by providing accurate and reliable data and analyzing and analyzing the data to develop policy and plans to achieve SDGs 2030. The main concerns were about the inadequacy in technology adoption among all countries, and data privacy and transparency. Big data analysis can provide the ability to monitor the progress toward achieving SDGs by 2030. Big data analysis can be more cost-effective and faster in tracking SDGs than, for example, tracking poverty by traditional methods such as by questionnaires or interviews, which can be ineffective and time-consuming as well as require significant effort (Blumenstock, Cadamuro & On, 2015; Steele et al., 2017).
The focus on SDGs is stated in Goal 3, to “ensure healthy lives and promote well-being for all at all ages” (United Nations, 2015). Big data can help in providing precise and clear information about health. Barrett, Humblet, Hiatt & Adler, (2013) makes this point by better adopting big data analysis to understand population behavior and social and environmental factors. This will help in population health management and prevent the disease and target subpopulations by having accurate and real-time data. Big data analysis can help achieve SDGs by promoting well-being and chronic disease prevention through big data analysis.
1.3 Research Gap
As discussed in the literature, big data is emerging as a great source of improvement in different sectors of the world, especially for the countries that are adopting advanced health care systems. Most developed countries have recognized the importance of big data and have shown interest in improving the health care system through the collection and analysis of big data (Catalyst, 2018; Pastorino at al., 2019).The UAE is an example of a nation whose healthcare systems are up to date and equipped with modern health facilities. However, there is limited research in this context that have considered, that despite existing challenges of data security, data classification, data modeling, data storage, data accommodation and technology incorporation, whether the integration of big data and health care can emerge as a sustainable system. In countries similar to the UAE, with a high population and complex health care systems, the implementation of big data analysis will be a challenging task. The current study will focus on these challenges related to big data and the health care system, focusing on the context of the UAE.
This research study aims to gain further insight using a systematic approach to review the role and effectiveness of big data in the area of health care within the UAE. The objectives of the study are:
- To investigate the role of big data in the health care system.
- To identify opportunities to enhance quality-of-care services through integrating big data in the health care system.
- To understand the challenges related to implementing and using big data technologies.