Evaluating big data using artificial neural networks for developing clinical decision support systems

Medical data is growing by leaps and bounds resulting in very large data collections, referred to as “big data,” for research and clinical systems development. Machine learning tools and artificial neural networks in particular are excellent methods to apply against decision problems that have the availability of big data sets. An examination of existing research that uses medical big data sets with greater than 10000 records is performed, with the two largest research data sets each having over one million records. A method for applying artificial neural networks to big data in medical settings is presented.