Abstract

The era of big data is upon us. We have more data than ever before, greater computing power to process and analyze such data, and access to new forms of data opening up novel research avenues. The promise offered through big data has brought great potential for researchers to answer many long-standing questions and provide more accurate solutions to problems (Boyd and Crawford, 2012), although significant challenges remain (Khoury and Ioannidis, 2014). In this chapter, we outline the varying definitions of “big data,” the applications across health and health geography and the challenges and opportunities associated with using big data.