The era of open information in healthcare has arrived. E-healthcare supported by big data supports the move toward greater trans-parency in healthcare by making decades of stored health data searchable and usable. This paper gives an overview the e-health-care architecture. We discuss the four layers of the architecture-data collection, data transport, data storage, and data analysis-as well as the challenges of data security, data privacy, real-time delivery, and open standard interface. We discuss the necessity of establishing an impeccably secure access mechanism and of enacting strong laws to protect patient privacy.