Big data and clinical research: perspective from a clinician

The 21^st century is an era of information technology and people faces information explosion with large amount of data. The term big data has been defined in Wikepedia as: big data is the term for a collection of data sets so large and complex that it becomes difficult to process using on-hand database management tools or traditional data processing applications. In all areas of disciplines, such a big data may help to explore underlying mechanisms of varieties of phenomenon, and further facilitate decision-making. For example, in the 2012 USA presidential election, data-driven decision-making played a huge role in helping Obama win (1). In biomedical field, big data also begin to show its important role. Medical decision-making is becoming more and more dependent on data analysis, rather than conventional experience and intuition (2).