The Awareness and Usage of Big Data for Cancer in Korea: A Survey Study

Abstract

Objectives A growing interest in big data for cancer research and treatment motivated us to investigate the demand for it by healthcare users. Methods The survey was conducted from December 3, 2019 to January 7, 2020, in Korea. Respondents from 18 healthcare organizations participated in the survey. Among the 172 questionnaires received, 164 responses were used for the final analyses. Results The majority of respondents showed a high awareness of big data related to cancer (n=148, 90.2%). However, only about half of the respondents were aware of how big data related to cancer is used (n=85, 51.8%). Among the respondents with experience using big data (n=83, 50.6%), more than half used big data only about once a year (n=43, 51.8%). The majority of respondents had particularly high demand for big data associated with “chemotherapy” (n=154, 94.5%), followed by “cancer type at diagnosis status”, “clinical stage,” and “recurrence.” The main considerations for releasing cancer big data were “trustworthiness of data” (63.2%), “provision of valuable data” (58.9%), and “improvement of data accuracy” (55.8%). Conclusions The study identified that even though respondents have a high awareness of and demand for big data related to cancer, it is not being sufficiently utilized at present. To increase the utilization of big data for cancer research and treatment, it is necessary to consider its purpose and how to make it available in line with the specific requirements of the health-care industry, hospitals, and academia.