Is your healthcare data safe? That’s not something most people think about on a regular basis. We take for granted that our medical records, family histories, insurance coverage and the rest of the data associated with our health is protected carefully by those who...
Health / Pharma
Recent Articles
Using Big Data to Audit Access to Patient Data and Beyond
Middlesex Hospital, located in Middletown, Conn., is in the anticipation business. And thanks to analytics software, business is starting to get good. Auditing who is accessing patient data in an electronic health record (EHR) is a requirement for hospitals attesting...
Why the internet of things is big data’s latest killer app — if you do it right
Every year, nearly 2 million people contract infections while staying at the hospital, and inadequate handwashing is a big cause. It turns out we might be able to help fix the handwashing problem with help from intelligent sensors, and a Huntsville, Ala.-based...
How one app helped 50,000 women get pregnant
Almost everyone over the age of 12 knows how babies are made. But big data is changing even that in a big way. At the very least, it’s making the process of getting pregnant a lot more predictable. Today, Ovuline announced that more than 50,000 women have used its...
Twitter ‘big data’ can be used to monitor HIV and drug-related behavior
Real-time social media like Twitter could be used to track HIV incidence and drug-related behaviors with the aim of detecting and potentially preventing outbreaks, a new UCLA-led study shows. The study, published in the peer-reviewed journal Preventive Medicine,...
Why I won’t be sharing my medical data with anyone – yet
If ever there was an open goal for big data, healthcare should be it. By gathering information from doctors, patients, drug companies, insurers, and charities, and putting the big data machinery to work on analysing it, we should be able to get better insights into a...
Value of big data in health care is measured not just in dollars, but in lives
While wait times, access to family physicians and funding formulas make up the bulk of the debate about Canadian healthcare reform, one key to boosting productivity is better use of big data analysis in all aspects of healthcare. Indeed, the potential for big data to...
Value of big data in health care is measured not just in dollars, but in lives
While wait times, access to family physicians and funding formulas make up the bulk of the debate about Canadian healthcare reform, one key to boosting productivity is better use of big data analysis in all aspects of healthcare. Indeed, the potential for big data to...
Health data: some questions about profits, privacy and the public interest
It’s time for an informed public debate about the many questions raised by the commodification of “big data” in health, according to Canberra Law School academics, Bruce Baer Arnold and Wendy Bonython. Who is taking care of your health data? Bruce Baer Arnold and...
Big Data Crushes Anti-Vaccination Movement
For years it’s been relatively easy to ignite medical controversy with emotional (but often anecdotal) evidence. TV is a popular format for doing just that. It’s quick, colorful and dramatic (and increasingly in high-def and big-screen). Add a well known celebrity (or...
Sharing Your Healthcare Data Is The Ethical Thing To Do
In March, the NHS Health and Social Care Information Centre (HSCIC) will start collecting anonymised patient information from GPs in England for the very first time. It is hoped that the ‘Care.Data’ scheme will enable healthcare professionals to monitor the spread of...
Big data tool harnesses 125 years of infectious disease info to boost collaboration
The increasing availability of big data from the likes of CMS to get a better handle on population health patterns is a growing trend in healthcare. Health IT startups such as Social Health Insights and Konnectology are just a couple of examples of that in action. But...
Big Data: The Key To Better Health Care?
The discussion about how to fix health care in America shouldn't focus on websites or servers or insurance mandates or policies. It should focus on better data analytics. That's according to a panel of experts who spoke Tuesday at the TechAmerica Foundation's Big Data...
Google’s flu fail shows the problem with big data
When people talk about ‘big data’, there is an oft-quoted example: a proposed public health tool called Google Flu Trends. It has become something of a pin-up for the big data movement, but it might not be as effective as many claim. The idea behind big data is that...
Visualizing the Big Data of Breast Cancer
A colorful wheel developed by Rice University bioengineers to visualize protein interactions has won an international competition for novel strategies to study the roots of breast cancer. The winning BioWheel by the Rice lab of bioengineer Amina Qutub was chosen this...
Why big data has so far failed medicine
Can big data improve human decision-making? That was the question that MIT's Irving Wladawsky-Berger put to a panel of IBM clients at the company's research colloquium on cognitive computing Wednesday. The meat of his discussion focused on Douglas Johnston, a surgeon...
Durkheim Project Leverages Big Data to Prevent Veteran Suicides
Suicide has grown to epidemic proportions among U.S. veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan, and the Pentagon and U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs is hoping that social media and big data can help them identify at-risk veterans and get them the care they need. Last year,...
Researching ALS through new eyes — Why data science will foster life science breakthroughs
Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, commonly known as ALS, is an enduring mystery for life scientists--even those who have dedicated their careers to understanding it and finding a cure. Terminal, essentially untreatable, and frustratingly hard to predict, the disease has...
Clinical data analytics next big thing
The clinical data analytics market is about to get red hot. With the shift toward new payment models and the sheer amount of clinical data contained in electronic health records, more and more healthcare groups are looking to analytics solutions for population health...
Big pharma mobilising patients in battle over drugs trials data
The pharmaceutical industry has "mobilised" an army of patient groups to lobby against plans to force companies to publish secret documents on drugs trials. Drugs companies publish only a fraction of their results and keep much of the information to themselves, but...
How big data can revolutionize pharmaceutical R&D
The big-data opportunity is especially compelling in complex business environments experiencing an explosion in the types and volumes of available data. In the health-care and pharmaceutical industries, data growth is generated from several sources, including the R&D...