Utilizing Big Data analytics and electronic health record data in HIV prevention, treatment, and care research: a literature review

ABSTRACT

Propelled by the transformative power of modern information and communication technologies, digitalization of data, and the increasing affordability of high-performance computing, Big Data science has brought forth revolutionary advancement in many areas of business, industry, health, and medicine. The HIV research and care service community is no exception to the benefits from the availability and utilization of Big Data analytics. Electronic health record (EHR) data (e.g., administrative and billing data, electronic medical records, or other digital records of information pertinent to individual or population health) are an essential source of health and disease outcome data because of the large amount of real-world, comprehensive, and often longitudinal data, which provide a good opportunity for leveraging advanced Big Data analytics in addressing challenges in HIV prevention, treatment, and care. This review focuses on studies that apply Big Data analytics to EHR data with aims to synthesize the HIV-related issues that EHR data studies can tackle, identify challenges in the utilization of EHR data in HIV research and practice, and discuss future needs and directions that can realize the promising potential role of Big Data in ending the HIV epidemic.

KEYWORDS:

• Big Data
• Big Data analytics
• electronic health records
• HIV
• prediction model

Acknowledgements

The views in this paper are solely the responsibility of the authors rather than of the funding institutions. We greatly appreciate the assistance and support from Drs Quan Zhang, Cheuk Chi Tam, and Xueying Yang in searching, retrieving, and screening articles. We thank Dr Homayoun Valafar for his comments. We also thank Ms Miranda Cole and Ms Susan Cate for their assistance in editing and proofreading the manuscript.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This study is supported by the University of South Carolina Excellence Initiative [USCIP 80003116] and the National Institutes of Health [grant number R01A1127203]. Dr. Young's work is supported by National Institute of Mental Health [grant number 5 R01 MH106415-06] and National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases [grant number 7R01 AI132030]. The funders played no role in the design and writing of this manuscript.