Big-Data Enabled Nursing: Future Possibilities

Possible futures for education, partnerships, research, and practice are presented as a result of our immersion in the world of big data and data science. We propose basic and sweeping changes in each of these areas, especially for nursing. Kuhn’s episodic model of scientific revolution where suddenly the discovery of a new path changes the way we view and live in the world may explain some of what we see and experience. This new paradigm asks questions of old data, proposes new ways to manage data, and hypothesizes where new data might be found. The paradigm shifts from “puzzle-solving” to changing the rules of the game and the mapping directing new operations and research (Kuhn, 1962, 2012).