Utilization of big data to improve management of the emergency departments. Results of a systematic review

Background. The emphasis on using big data is growing exponentially in several sectors including biomedicine, life sciences and scientific research, mainly due to advances in information technologies and data analysis techniques. Actually, medical sciences can rely on a large amount of biomedical information and Big Data can aggregate information around multiple scales, from the DNA to the ecosystems. Given these premises, we wondered if big data could be useful to analyze complex systems such as the Emergency Departments (EDs) to improve their management and eventually patient outcomes. Methods. We performed a systematic review of the literature to identify the studies that implemented the application of big data in EDs and to describe what have already been done and what are the expectations, issues and challenges in this field. Results. Globally, eight studies met our inclusion criteria concerning three main activities: the management of ED visits, the ED process and activities and, finally, the prediction of the outcome of ED patients. Although the results of the studies show good perspectives regarding the use of big data in the management of emergency departments, there are still some issues that make their use still difficult. Most of the predictive models and algorithms have been applied only in retrospective studies, not considering the challenge and the costs of a real-time use of big data. Only few studies highlight the possible usefulness of the large volume of clinical data stored into electronic health records to generate evidence in real time. Conclusion. The proper use of big data in this field still requires a better management information flow to allow real-time application.