Medical Big Data Storage in Precision Medicine: A Systematic Review

The characteristics of medical data in Precision Medicine (PM), the challenges related to their storage and retrieval, and the effective facilities to address these challenges are importantly considered in implementing PM. For this purpose, a secured and scalable infrastructure for various data integration and storage is needed.

This study aimed to determine the characteristics of PM data and recognize the challenges and solutions related to appropriate infrastructure for data storage and its related issues.

In this systematic study, coherent research was conducted on Web of Science, Scopus, PubMed, Embase, and Google Scholar from 2015 to 2023. A total of 16 articles were selected and evaluated based on the inclusion and exclusion criteria and the central search theme of the study.

A total of 1,961 studies were identified from designated databases, 16 articles met the eligibility criteria and were classified into five main sections PM data and its major characteristics based on the volume, variety and velocity (3Vs) of medical big data, data quality issues, appropriate infrastructure for PM data storage, cloud computing and PM infrastructure, and security and privacy. The variety of PM data is categorized into four major categories.

A suitable infrastructure for precision medicine should be capable of integrating and storing heterogeneous data from diverse departments and sources. By leveraging big data management experiences from other industries and aligning their characteristics with those in precision medicine, it is possible to facilitate the implementation of precision medicine while avoiding duplication.