Authors: Lucy Stirland, Tom Russ, Tom Foley
Date: 2023/12/7
Title: Digital Mental Health: From Theory to Practice
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Description: The term ‘big data’ has been used increasingly in healthcare research in the first two decades of the twenty-first century. Most definitions focus on its characteristics, namely volume, variety and velocity, and other attributes have been identified including veracity, variability and value. There is no consensus on the volume that is classed as ‘big’. This is summarised in Figure 4.1. It is clear that big data reflects advances in information technology and the ability to store, securely access, manage and analyse large-volume datasets.
One approach to defining size is that big data requires high-powered storage and analytic methods. ‘Big data’ is also used by technology companies to refer to information gathered about the public, often personal in nature or relating to their use of devices or platforms. In any setting, the large size can come from the breadth of a dataset (how many people’s data are included), its depth (the number of variables per person) or both.