A recently released report by Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation proves the value of big data is certainly something to take seriously. And as more organizations create plans to make better use of and leverage their big data, Joe Petro, senior vice president of healthcare research and development at Nuance Communications, believes the industry is on the brink of seeing some pretty remarkable things as a result.

Over the next 6 to 12 months, Park says the two main challenges with big data projects will be mastering visualization of data sets for more widespread use and contextualization of data within enterprise parameters and governance. These forces combined will mark the next tier of ROI and success with the growing expectations from big data.

Business intelligence (BI) increasingly is becoming a priority for hospital CIOs, particularly with the advent of health information exchange and accountable care models, according to the report released by Orem, Utah-based healthcare IT research firm KLAS earlier this week. More specifically, enterprise BI solutions–those that, according to the report, “simultaneously organize, analyze and visualize clinical, financial, and operational data” organization-wide–clearly are the path of choice among the providers surveyed (83 percent).

Business technology thought leader John Ladley has spent 30 years around data and IT project management, where he witnessed and pioneered in the progressions of data warehousing, business intelligence and enterprise information management. This week the author and partner of Amitech Solutions, led a series of data innovation briefings addressing emerging technologies at the Enterprise Data World 2012 conference in Atlanta that often included the topics of big data and semantic technologies.

Spending on information technology is the one exception to a marked slowdown in capital spending by hospitals, according to a new survey from the Premier healthcare alliance. Premier pins the slowdown on legislative and economic uncertainty.