Every few years new buzz words trend and lately Big Data and Predictive Analytics seem to have made the top of the list. It begs the question, which industries are enhancing solutions with the data and, is predictive analytics here to stay? Below are a few industries that have utilized big data to their benefit:
1. Banking: Online financial providers, such as PayPal, utilize information such as historical payment data, the device used to make payments, country and profile in machine learning algorithms. These results identify possible signs of fraud with every transaction to help resolve a problem before it’s too late.
2. Travel: When you live on the east coast and are planning travel to the west coast, you have a plethora of options to get there: car, train, air. Beyond that, even if you know you want to fly, which airline or flight schedule is the best for your schedule? This is where recommender systems have really taken off. They provide the most beneficial and appropriate options to travelers all while maximizing profits for travel providers.
3. Insurance: For life insurance providers to present you with a plan, they first determine your life expectancy. By analyzing your lifestyle choices and pre-existing conditions they can predict the probability of your lifespan based on a survival model.
Industries and companies have utilized predictive analytics to improve customer experience, return on investment, operations and how they run their business overall. Healthcare is relatively new to the predictive analytics space when compared with other industries, but the value and impact that can be achieved is equally, if not more, impactful.. Today’s clinicians are inundated with information from numerous, complex sources. Much of this valuable clinical data is siloed within electronic medical records in our healthcare systems. By aggregating data that predicts risk and leveraging the information into “scores” that change as new clinical information is obtained, clinicians can quickly visualize a patient’s condition and develop or adjust plans of care as needed to prevent adverse patient outcomes. Predictive analytics is transforming healthcare data into lifesaving intelligence and optimizing operations, communication, outcomes and, ultimately, saving lives.