The biggest challenge for the use of “big data” in health care is social, not technical. Data-intensive approaches to medicine based on predictive modeling hold enormous potential for solving some of the biggest and most intractable problems of health care. The challenge now is figuring out how people, both patients and providers, will actually use data in practice.

Big Data, September 2013, 1(3): 117-123. doi:10.1089/big.2013.0029.