There are a handful of legal initiatives that are related to advancing analytics in healthcare. The most relevant of these is the All of Us initiative (formerly known as the Precision Medicine Initiative), which was enacted in 2015, and aims to collect health and genetic data from one million people by 2022 in an effort to advance precision medicine and medicine tailored to individuals.

Additionally, the following three initiatives, while not directly related to analytics, may indirectly increase funding for analytics research in healthcare. The Brain Initiative, passed in 2013, has the goal of radically improving our understanding of brain-related and neurological diseases such as Alzheimer's and Parkinson's disease. Cancer Breakthroughs 2020, passed in 2016, is focused on finding vaccines and immunotherapies against cancer. And the 21st Century Cures Act of 2016 streamlines the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) drug approval process, among other provisions.

Together, the legislation of the past three decades discussed previously has set the stage for revolutionizing how healthcare analytics is performed and has created new challenges to be solved by healthcare analytics, not only in the US, but also across the globe. The new reimbursement and financing methods task us with the problem of figuring out how healthcare can be performed more efficiently, given the data that we already have.

Now let's shift gears and see what clinical data is comprised of exactly.