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This study aims to detect if and how big data can improve the quality and timeliness of information in infrastructural healthcare Project Finance (PF) investments, making them more sustainable and increasing overall efficiency. Interactions with telemedicine or disease management and prediction are promising but still underexploited. However, given the rising health expenditure and shrinking budgets, data-driven cost-cutting is inevitably required. An interdisciplinary approach combines complementary aspects concerning big data, healthcare information technology, and PF investments. The methodology is based on a business plan of a standard healthcare Public-Private Partnership (PPP) investment, compared with a big data-driven business model that incorporates predictive analytics in different scenarios. When Public and Private Partners interact through networking big data and interoperable databases, they boost value co-creation, improving Value for Money and reducing risk. Big data can also help shortening supply chain steps, expanding economic marginality and easing the sustainable planning of smart healthcare investments. Flexibility, driven by timely big data feedbacks, contributes to reducing the intrinsic rigidity of long-termed PF healthcare investments. Healthcare is a highly networked and systemic industry that can benefit from interacting with big data that provide timely feedbacks for continuous business model re-engineering, reducing the distance between forecasts and actual occurrences. Risk shrinks and sustainability is fostered, together with the bankability of the infrastructural investment.

In this paper, we report the experimentation of QUESt, a Web-based tool designed to disseminate case-based knowledge in communities of experts, in the domain of medical training. To this aim, QUESt allowed the teachers of a specialization medical school to create virtual patients in the form of interactive online questionnaires and have students interact with these in a clinical contest. We discuss the results to argue that virtual patients and similar tools can foster the discussion and dissemination of case-oriented medical knowledge if used in lightly gamified initiatives, where participation is more important than winning.