The healthcare industry historically has generated large amounts of data, driven by record keeping, compliance & regulatory requirements, and patient care. While most data is stored in hard copy form, the current trend is toward rapid digitization of these large amounts of data. Driven by mandatory requirements and the potential to improve the quality of healthcare delivery meanwhile reducing the costs, these big data hold the promise of supporting a wide range of medical and healthcare functions, including among others clinical decision support, disease surveillance, and population health management. Big data in healthcare refers to electronic health data sets so large and complex that they are difficult to manage with traditional software or hardware; nor can they be easily managed with traditional or common data management tools and methods. Big data in healthcare is overwhelming not only because of its volume but also because of the diversity of data types and the speed at which it must be managed. The totality of data related to patient healthcare and well-being make up “big data” in the healthcare industry. To read more about the advancement of big data in Healthcare visit: http://www.mckinsey.com/insights/health_systems_and_services/the_big-data_revolution_in_us_health_care.