One of the arenas most impacted by the Big Data revolution has been the medical industry. Because of gains made in the realm of data science, medical records are more searchable, genetic records can lead to better information, and drug results or side-effects can be better ascertained.
Better still, we are just on the cusp of the Big Data revolution in medicine. Already, we see incredible, life-saving advances. But much more needs to be done. Consider this story, as reported by NPR. Back in 2011, a young girl from Nevada was flown to Stanford Medical. Gravely ill and with her kidneys shutting down, doctors at Stanford decided on a preliminary diagnosis of lupus. Now they had a decision to make. The team working with this patient knew that many lupus patients developed blood clots. The doctors could circumvent this potential issue with a specific medication. But that medication could cause other problems. So, the question persisted – did the benefits outweigh the risks? The doctors debated the issue. If they stopped the clots but caused the patient to have a stroke or another blood issue, they would be doing more harm than good. So what, exactly, was the potential risk?
While the debate continued, one of the physicians exited and went to search for similar cases in the hospital database. She found sufficient evidence of the risk of stroke to move the team of doctors in that direction. They prescribed the medication; the patient recovered and is, according to the story, currently happy and healthy. Saved by easily searchable data…information the hospital already had. But information too voluminous for the doctors to go through without the help of Big Data Science. A few years ago the amount of data that the physician searched through would fill a room and take hours, days or even weeks to pour through and connect all the dots. Big Data allowed her to accomplish that task in minutes with a single keystroke.
As it currently stands, many hospitals are still wary of using data in this fashion. But they are warming to the idea. And, as data science continues to improve, and a track record becomes obvious and established, expect to see an increasing number of medical facilities depending more and more on data science to keep their patients healthy.
Dr. Gil Lederman is a New York doctor – who constantly explores and perfects how to best treat patients.
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