Data Science

Data science is the study of how analytics techniques can be applied to large and diverse data sets. This field is emerging because of the availability of massive data sets in both consumer and health sectors, new machine learning and other analytics requiring large-scale computation, and the vital need to identify risk factors, trends, and other relationships not apparent when applying traditional analytics methods to smaller structured data sets. In some organizations, the primary role of a clinical informatics professional no longer is focused on how electronic health records are used in healthcare delivery but instead is focused on how patient encounter information can be collected efficiently, aggregated with information from other encounters or sources, and analyzed to improve our understanding of how population studies can improve the care of individuals. Such an understanding is critical to improving care quality and lowering healthcare costs.