We live in a data-centric world where new digital content is created in incredible amounts in matter of seconds. Companies and organizations attempt to analyze this massive, diverse and fast growing big data to function better and more effectively while also looking to gain new insights on how they operate. Big Data and analytics are subjects that have been researched thoroughly from the healthcare point of view. Healthcare is also one of the industries that is widely recognized to be among the top beneficiaries of Big Data analytics. In this thesis we’re looking for answers to question on how analytics have developed and to what direction analytics are being developed. This question is answered by examining the history of business intelligence & analytics, the development and technologies that make Big Data analytics possible. The second question posed in the thesis is how analytics can be used in healthcare industry. The answer is provided by doing review of analytics solutions implemented by healthcare organizations around the world. The thesis also includes a short review on what kind of analytic solutions could be done in the Finnish healthcare. In this thesis the development of analytics is discovered to be Big Data oriented and that there are many opportunities in healthcare industry for using advanced analytics. This thesis has been done as a literature review, the sources coming from well-known and reliable scientific publications. There are some references to white papers by information technology companies and to company or organizational web-pages. They are only used for providing information on specific topics and are not considered to be main sources for scientific research.