The explosion of data in the healthcare industry shows no sign of slowing. There is approximately 500 petabytes of healthcare data in existence today and that number is expected to skyrocket to more than 25,000 petabytes within the next seven years. Anyone who manages data knows that amount of growth presents major challenges.

One of the major contributors to this spike in healthcare data growth and one of the biggest threats to compliance and security is "dark data," which is unaccounted for by IT departments that have no insight or centralized control over how it's being created, stored or used. 

In large part, dark data is being shared by consumer storage devices like USB keys or transmitted via mobile or edge devices. I can't tell you the number of practitioners and healthcare IT clients who have told me they know clinical information is regularly transmitted over open, unsecured text messaging systems or via email.

 I have even heard of patient photos being texted to peers or to staff in an attempt to gain additional perspectives to better diagnose a patient's outcome. That text, email or file being shared in a public cloud is referred to as dark data  -  meaning there is no way of understanding the context or content that resides within it, nor does the organization know that it resides in places outside of its environment, rather it is in an unprotected, non-compliant location. Like it or not, the transmission and subsequent creation of dark data is happening. The challenge is that this data can never be analyzed, and it will never meet even the most lax compliance policies, unless properly managed. 

So, how do we bring this information we have, but can't actually use  - "dark data" -  to light? Also, how can we support physicians who are already using these new technologies without hindering their day-to-day operations?

Based on years of experience in healthcare data management and new technologies, I believe there are three essential steps organizations must take in order to both protect and potentially analyze their unstructured or dark data.   

• Provider organizations, to the greatest extent possible, must simplify and centralize data management in order to encompass all enterprise data, whether structured, unstructured or dark. This will require both a policy and technology to achieve. Regardless of the application or combination of hardware and software an organization is using to store, transmit or access data, technology now exists that can provide all encompassing management from the cloud to the data center all the way to providers' smartphones. It is technology innovation that has created the challenge of dark data, so it makes sense that it is technology that can bring it back to light. With data being spread across an increasingly wide array of locations and devices there must be a policy that dictates best practices and ensures all data  -  wherever it resides  -  is protected and able to be mined.