The promise and peril of big data for health research in Ireland

Health care has now entered an era of ‘big data’, in which unprecedented volumes of information are collected routinely on patients and their families, on health care workers and providers, and on service use and unmet need. ‘Big’ data may be particularly valuable in guiding the development of palliative and end-of-life care, due to the challenges conducting primary research studies and the substantial routine data collection on people with serious illness.
At this event there were lively discussions on the challenges and opportunities of using ‘big data’ for health care research in Ireland – thanks to the great mix of people in the room, and the thought-provoking contributions from our expert speakers. Download the programme and speaker biographies here.
The morning included a Health Research Board presentation on the coming European Health Data Space, which promises to be a game-changer for health data in Ireland and across the EU, and we heard about recent initiatives in the UK that can inform the Republic of Ireland’s efforts at better data use and linkage of data for practice, policy and research.