Big data has been big news in 2012. This year has seen a plethora of new apps, platforms and sensors that help create and capture more data about many aspects of our lives - from fitness and diet to energy consumption and retail. Advances in computer science and digital tools are rapidly improving our ability to analyse a greater volume, variety and velocity of data. Culturally, the shift towards much greater openness has had a significant impact on the public sector with more and more agencies opening up their data sets. Research shows that businesses are increasingly using data analytics to guide their innovation strategies.

How will this affect how we create and use knowledge about our health? How could we get better at mobilising knowledge held by all of the different people involved in improving health - including doctors and nurses, community health workers, pharmacists, researchers, businesses, patients, families and carers - and make this knowledge widely accessible?

In 2013, open access to reliable knowledge about health will be a major focus for reform and innovation. We will see open research databases that share the results of clinical trials, new tools that enable more people to participate in research including patients and other user groups, computational models that guide decision-makers with the most up to date advances in medical knowledge, and platforms that can record complex non-physiological factors, compare treatments and share experiential knowledge. Our ability to capture and use data and knowledge created both within and beyond the system will improve and challenge perceptions of what constitutes useful and reliable knowledge in health.

What will emerge is a debate about the 'commons' of health knowledge and how it is governed: who owns our health data? Is knowledge about health a public good? How should health knowledge systems be organised to ensure that the right knowledge gets to the right person at the right time? What does this mean for professional roles and patient responsibilities?

Why will this be important? As many more of us are living with chronic conditions, maximising our ability to live autonomously and make sensible decisions about our health is a critical role for any health system (and is likely to grow more important as costs become unsustainable). We need to improve the reliability of knowledge creation, and the application of research in practice, and base diagnosis and treatment on real-time, dynamic information. The relationship between professionals and the public has long been in the spotlight; 2013 will see the focus sharpen on common knowledge.