Analysis ⁽¹⁾ of industry data by Zegami, the data visualisation company helping businesses unlock their data potential, reveals that expenditure on big data analytics in healthcare is estimated to see a compound annual growth rate of over 19% between now and 2027.  By then, the sector could be worth over $95 billion.

There are a number of factors fuelling this growth including the increased adoption of data-driven decision making in the healthcare sector, the emergence of cloud-based business intelligence (BI) solutions for the industry, an increased focus on reducing costs and the emergence of mobile-based healthcare business intelligence solutions.

Roger Noble, Founder and CTO, Zegami said: “The amount of clinical data alone that has been produced between 2013 and today has increased by over 1,400%. ⁽²⁾  With the roll-out of 5G and the growth of the Internet of Things, the amount of data produced by the medical sector will proliferate at a rate we have never seen before.  Data visualisation tools are critical to managing this, reducing costs in the medical sector and ultimately improving care and treatments.”

Zegami believes that over the next few years, the medical professional will be one of the biggest adopters of data visualisation tools, and it’s already working on several projects in this sector.  They include:

• A project collaborating with MRC Weatherall Institute for Molecular Medicines (MRC WIMM) Centre for Computational Biology to help clean its data and assist with the training of its machine learning models, specifically around developing a better understanding of which proteins in genes bind, and where they do this in the genome.
• After winning Cancer Research UK’s Early Cancer Detection Sandpit Challenge in 2019, Zegami is currently working with Professor Barbara Braden (Oxford University), Dr Xiohang Gao (Middlesex University) and Dr Wei Pan (Herriot Watt University) on a range of cancer projects.  One such project is linked to oesophageal cancers, most of which are detected by endoscopy when they have reached an advanced stage and treatment is less effective and patient prognosis is poor.
• Working with Oxford University researchers to help improve its diagnosis of cardiovascular diseases such as coronary heart and aortic diseases. It will do this by applying data visualisation techniques to echo cardiogram images, making it easier to categorise them and identify trends and patterns poor.

Zegami launched out of Oxford University in 2016.  It is currently exploring new ideas and making new discoveries for 35 clients and counting, across an ever-growing variety of sectors.