Data-Driven Approaches in Healthcare: Challenges and Emerging Trends

Data is dominating and revolutionizing the healthcare industry in unprecedented ways. Associated with the new technologies of artificial intelligence, they promise to create the foundations for a new paradigm of medicine focused on the individuality of each person. This chapter is divided into four sections that aim to introduce the reader to the topic of data-driven approaches in the health sector. In section one, three ideologies are presented that, despite having some overlaps, present different views on how data should be used in order to guarantee a health service centered on each individual. In section two, the data-driven concept is explored. The emerging challenges of processing large volumes of data and their impacts on individuals, institutions, and society are associated with innovation in other disciplines such as artificial intelligence and personalized medicine. Since artificial intelligence is becoming a disruptive technology in the health sector, section three is dedicated to addressing the ethics and legal challenges posed by this new technological advance. To conclude, section four describes how the healthcare industry has become a major proving ground for artificial intelligence applications, with both startups and venture capital investors recognizing the enormous potential this technology can offer.