Historically, the European Union falls under this category of taking a prescriptive approach to data flows.
A secondary objective is to highlight the potential benefits of predictive and prescriptive clinical big data analytics.
The prescriptive analytics require data sharing among computing nodes, which unfortunately cannot be achieved easily (i.e. sophisticated programs with a great deal of data management) using MapReduce, and thus, not all optimization problems (i.e. prescriptive analytics) can be implemented on the MapReduce framework.
But the danger is when data becomes prescriptive, because that fails to acknowledge what influences trends.
Now, a startup out of central Europe called Futurelytics is hoping to be one of the leaders in the third piece of the big data puzzle: prescriptive analytics, or how to use the information gleaned from big data analysis to suggest what a company should change to improve performance.
Yet, it doesn't feel as if computers are actually running the healthcare industry because the diagnostic and prescriptive programs run on data supplied by humans.
Due to the open and non-prescriptive nature of the data analysis, the researchers will work their material individually, as well as in group sessions, in order to limit the impact of subjectivity on interpreting the data.
Indeed we would call on the government to go further by being more prescriptive in how councils publish data – by ensuring confidential details are removed, that everyone follows the same format, supplies the same level of detail, suppliers are consistently named, all cells are complete before being uploaded and that negative spends are excluded.
The devised policies must also include prescriptive steps that ensure that data is used ethically (and not misused by malevolent actors and crisis profiteers).
