ASHRAE Journal - February 2015 - 59

COLUMN DATA CENTERS

Initially, much of this data storage will be local on
devices, but as the sensors and sample rates are significantly increased, cloud-based data storage will become
necessary. This data will in turn be combined with other
medical and family history data for new forms of medical analytics and insights. Though to get here, there are
many regulatory barriers to get over.
Each of us leaves behind a significant health-related
digital footprint every single day (exercise data, medical
record data, habits, medication routines, environmental interactions, vital sign data, etc.). These digital clues
represent valuable data for the prevention, analysis,
diagnosis, and treatment of medical symptoms and
conditions.

Software Defined Health Care (SDH)
Historically, health-care solutions have been defined
by large capital intensive hospitals and customized
hardware solutions. Many of these antiquated hardware solutions can still be found in most of today's
medical centers. Further, much of the medical data is
still captured in written form, sometimes never to be
transferred, stored, analyzed, and leveraged at later
times.
In a hardware defined environment, new solutions have historically been extremely slow to evolve.
Solutions are driven by custom and purpose built hardware platforms.
As covered in the February 2014 column, "software
is eating the world" and it is now defining the new
health-care solutions. Hardware is becoming an agnostic platform for open development projects, where
new solutions can be created at the pace of software
development.
Today health-care solutions are rapidly evolving as
the result of these software innovations. Examples
include:
* Software apps on smartphones;
* Integrated wearables (motion trackers, health
monitors, exercise monitors, etc.) - sales are predicted
to increase from $8.6 billion in 2012, to almost $30 billion by 2018;2 and
* Telehealth solutions-remote monitoring of patient
vitals from their homes.
SDH is resulting in an explosion of new data. This data
is beginning to populate servers located in a multitude
of data centers. Many hospitals have kept to an approach

Human Digitization
Many significant industry efforts are occurring to digitize human beings at scales only recently made possible
through significant technology advancements. Some
examples of this digitization include:
* Human behaviors and habits
* Data collection through smartphone apps
* E-commerce and shopping habits
* Travel behaviors and habits (location based)
* Human preventative health
* Explosion of wearable technology
* Food health-supply chain transparency, options,
etc.
* Gaming consoles and software for exercise
* Digital medicine
* Introduction of robotics
* Medicine management
* Human-generated data
* Physician and nursing notes, etc.
* Health Data Transactions
* Health-care claims
* Billing record management
* Digital Health Research
* Genome sequencing
* Chronic disease and pain mapping
* Social behavior with big data analytics and more

of playing it safe and hosted the data within their own
premises and data centers, while others have turned to
outsourced colocation data centers.
In both cases, SDH will continue to result in an explosion of human health data and the subsequent data center space.

Digital Environment Integration
Digital health extends well beyond the bounds of our
own bodies, which is why digital environment integration will become a key part of digital health.
What occurred in our environment has a direct effect
on our health. Some of today's buildings monitor a
limited amount of the indoor environmental conditions (temperature, humidity, CO2, etc.). However,
this is just scratching the surface of what will likely be
necessary to paint the full digital picture of tomorrow's
digital health.
FEBRUARY 2015

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