In this paper, we report our practical experience in designing and implementing a platform with Hadoop/MapReduce framework for supporting health Big Data Analytics. Three billion of emulated health raw data was constructed and cross-referenced with data profiles and metadata based on existing health data at the Island Health Authority, BC, Canada. The patient data was stored over a Hadoop Distributed File System to simulate a presentation of an entire health authority's information system. Then, a High Performance Computing platform called WestGrid was used to benchmark the performance of the platform via several data query tests. The work is important as very few implementation studies existed that tested a BDA platform applied to patient data of a health authority system.
Keywords: Hadoop; MapReduce; big data analytics; healthcare.