Big data will enhance healthcare, but to whose benefit?

[AussieNeil]

"Big-data technology will eventually underpin the healthcare system, though to what extent and what that means to patients are questions needing to be asked. "

According to Wikipedia, big data is an all-encompassing term for any collection of data sets so large and complex that it becomes difficult to process them using traditional data processing applications.

Here's an overview article that looks at the likely benefits along with the issues that need to be resolved for Big Health Data to deliver benefits to healthcare:

techrepublic.com/article/bi...

I recommend everyone at least read the final section of the article Who owns EHR (Electronic Health Record) data?

Neil

[Cllcanada Top Poster CURE Hero]

Here is another discussion on this topic from Medscape

medscape.com/viewarticle/83...

Also see CancerLinQ, to get a feel for this...

cancerlinq.org

[AussieNeil Partner Administrator in reply to Cllcanada]

Thanks for the references Chris. I've corrected the Medscape link which now points to the article "Big Data in Oncology: Costly Fad or Invaluable Tool?". (Your link lost the trailing 6.)

CancerLinQ certainly provides an interesting "glossy" presentation of the promise and they are certainly attracting significant funding.

Mining medical records for insights into causative factors for disease has of course been happening for many decades - it was how the association between tobacco use and lung cancer was identified over 50 years ago. Let's hope that the data capture and entry is accurate and that the de-identification of patients is done well.

Neil

[Cllcanada Top Poster CURE Hero in reply to AussieNeil]

Interesting on the link missing the last digit, I wonder if the parsing engine is dropping characters off the end of pasted strings as well as adding them to the front of pasted strings... which we noted...

I will monitor that...

[AussieNeil Partner Administrator in reply to Cllcanada]

Chris, I assumed you'd just missed the last character when copying the link - it's very easy to do as I can testify. HU have acknowledged your report on the partial image display and the extra character at the beginning of the title you captured. Newsfeed still shows it, but I've also noticed that Newsfeed has been updating pretty well immediately lately for me and it is showing my replies, which wasn't happening before. Search is now working extremely well for me; I'm finding what I'm looking for pretty quickly at long long last.

Update: This reply DIDN'T show on Newsfeed. Oh well, at least Search is again useful...

Update on the update. Newsfeed did show the above reply after my first update. Coincidentally there was another reply to another post at almost the same time as I first submitted this reply.

[Cllcanada Top Poster CURE Hero in reply to AussieNeil]

The iPad et al, does not require link selection... you simply tap the link and tap copy, or you can hit 'Send' icon and copy... no need to select the entire link as you would on a computer... you either get all the link URL in a Copy/Paste or none... if you fail to tap it twice...

But certainly, I could have hit 'backspace', after pasting... it wouldn't be the first time...