Big Data is changing the battle against infectious diseases.

Big Data has traditionally been associated with computer geeks and commercial enterprises, but it has become entrenched in many scientific disciplines including the prevention and control of infectious diseases. The use of Big Data has allowed disease trends to be identified and outbreak origins to be tracked and even predicted. Big Data is not getting smaller. The challenges we face are to hone our analytical capacity to address the huge "signal-to-noise" ratio with adequate computing power and multidisciplinary teams that can handle ever-increasing amounts of data. Big Data will also create the opportunity for future applications of (or personalized) treatment.