The healthcare system has reached the era of open information, with health care organizations aggregating data worth years of research and development into electronic forms. The federal governments and public sector are in the frontline converting the large volumes of data stored over decades into searchable, usable, and actionable forms. The text looks at the various options available to the nursing professional toremain informed and current in public health trends.
Big data
Healthcare stakeholders are now in access of ‘big data’ denoted by its diversity, complexity, timeliness, and enormity. Use of this data will help the profession to address variability in quality of healthcare, and to address the issues of escalating cost of care. Through improved technological capabilities and scientific innovations, and owing to the demand for better care, the use of big data will facilitate incentives for better and affordable healthcare to increase patient outcomes ( Grove et al, 2013).
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Evidence-based practice
Evidence-based medicine is another source of information that enriches quality of care through use of scientific evidence in making treatment and care decision. The system involves aggregating individual data sets into complex-data algorithms to establish evidence of similarities and nuances inpopulations exposed to different predisposing factors and environments, with the view of establishing correlationsbetween conditions and causative agents ( Sanders et al, 2016) . The results are fundamental in making clinical decisions.
Research, development, and Data-driven informatics
Pharmaceutical research and development data is a rich source of therapeutic information on working mechanisms of drugs, associated actions, and side effects. This will inform professional care related decision making. In addition, patient behavior and sentiment data (patient behavior, preferences, exercise data, retail purchase among others) is available from sources outside healthcare. This information is available from membership-based group-purchasing organizations that aggregate hospitals’information, and then make data-driven informaticsavailable to the subscribers. A good example is Premier ( Grove et al, 2013) .
Federal agencies
Another source is federal agencies, which collect and analyze healthcaredata with the objective to improve costing, quality, and general healthcare systems. Examples are Open Government Directive (2009), Centers for Disease Control (CDC) and the Health Data Initiative (HDI). Healthcare data is also available from healthcare conferences where healthcare providers interact with stakeholders, policy makers, entrepreneursand data experts, and community advocates to establish collaboration at enhancing system-wide improvements ( Labrique et al 2013) .
Conclusion
With the many options of information available to modern healthcare, proper data governance is needed to regulate its use while protecting the privacy of patients.In effect; more investments should be made in enhancing the capacity of healthcare systems to data accessibility and data-driven decision making to capture maximum benefits of the information revolution. Following the trend, there is need for advanced data analytic mechanisms to handle existing and emerging data effectively.
References
Groves, P., Kayyali, B., Knott, D., & Van Kuiken, S. (2013). The ‘big data’ revolution in healthcare. McKinsey Quarterly , 2 (3), 1-22.
Labrique, A. B., Vasudevan, L., Kochi, E., Fabricant, R., & Mehl, G. (2013). Health innovations as health system strengthening tools: 12 common applications and a visual framework. Global health: science and practice , 1 (2), 160-171.
Sanders, G. D., Neumann, P. J., Basu, A., Brock, D. W., Feeny, D., Krahn, M., ... & Salomon, J. A. (2016). Recommendations for conduct, methodological practices, and reporting of cost-effectiveness analyses: second panel on cost-effectiveness in health and medicine. Jama , 316 (10), 1093-1103.
