Clinicians decisions are becoming more and more evidence-based meaning in no other field the big data analytics so promising as in healthcare. Due to the sheer size and availability of healthcare data, big data analytics has revolutionized this industry and promises us a world of opportunities. It promises us the power of early detection, prediction, prevention and helps us to improve the quality of life. Researchers and clinicians are working to inhibit big data from having a positive impact on health in the future. Different tools and techniques are being used to analyze, process, accumulate, assimilate and manage large amount of healthcare data either in structured or unstructured form. In this paper, we would like to address the need of big data analytics in healthcare: why and how can it help to improve life?. We present the emerging landscape of big data and analytical techniques in the five sub-disciplines of healthcare i.e.medical image analysis and imaging informatics, bioinformatics, clinical informatics, public health informatics and medical signal analytics. We presents different architectures, advantages and repositories of each discipline that draws an integrated depiction of how distinct healthcare activities are accomplished in the pipeline to facilitate individual patients from multiple perspectives. Finally the paper ends with the notable applications and challenges in adoption of big data analytics in healthcare.