How Big Data Improves Quality of Mobile Health Apps

Patterns, predictions, customer preferences, and trends. This is Big Data. Mobile apps can predict the outcome of user trends by analyzing big data. This leads us to greater achievement with health apps that are available now, to create better ones for your phone or wearable. Big data, health apps, wearables, the IoT - they all go hand in hand. It’s predicted, the amount of devices that connect to the internet will rise from about 13 billion today to 50 billion by 2020 (found here). Everything is heading more toward a big data filled future - and we have to make those data driven decisions. Businesses and individuals can take advantage of this, in order to create apps and other technologies to help make our lives easier and better.

Big data is essentially very large amounts of data from users that can’t be processed by traditional analytics. It’s basically data from the vast expanses of the internet and smartphone apps that we use on a daily basis. What we are doing with the app, where we are, how it is storing it, how it is retrieving it, etc. Big data has been a huge factor in moving health apps forward. In particular, it’s being analyzed to predict outcomes of potential problems - predict epidemics, improve medicine and quality of life, prevent illness/death, etc.

Able to adjust to your needs, mobile health apps can reach tremendous goals with big data. As more and more people use health apps and health apps with their wearables, the amount of information that is coming and going is analyzed to project better results. I imagine that health apps would be extraordinarily useful for people with addictions. Big data would essentially help prevent addicts from falling down the rabbit hole - it would help them overcome their addictions. It would track their data to understand the individual and be able to move them in the right direction with suggestions and so forth.

Big data is essentially changing healthcare as we know it. Don’t believe me? Check this out. A health app can determine how healthy you are, what foods you’re eating, how much you’re exercising, how much you weigh, body fat percentage, etc. The data from these apps is being analyzed by healthcare providers and companies. Businesses are beginning to help their employees with an individual-based healthcare system. You are analyzed (from your data) and given the right healthcare for you, or options to choose from, based on your patterns. Even pregnancies are being tracked and predicted.

Humans are habitual beings. So it makes complete sense that the data we are creating would also be habitual and based on our patterns and trends. These things have worked, so this is expected to work... Big data is helping app developers create better apps for the future - all because we are using the apps we have available now. Security and privacy concerns have arisen amongst all this, but you must be aware of it, as a developer. Because you, too, are using these apps. You, too, are creating big data.