Israel is making a large payment on big data in medical research and treatment. There are plenty of startups and large companies that are parsing anonymized medical data, outcomes and results for patients, and patient data for signs on how diseases develop, how they can be treated, and how they can be prevented. The large payment is a $300 million investment in the big data digitization project. This would help make anonymized data available to researchers, pharmaceutical companies, and medical institutions.
The investment that Israel is making could be a huge step forward in helping patients who are suffering from whatever disease they have quicker, easier, and possibly more affordable. Medical data is an incredible resource that can be used to save lives and also enable personalized medicine too. This new technology could help medical professionals predict and even intrude on the disease before a condition or illness appears.
One form of this big data to enhance care is K, a mobile app that enables patients to receive personalized search results based on other patients similar to them. K uses a large number of anonymized doctor visits in Maccabi over the last 25 years. This data is then personalized for users and gives a highly reliable passage of what their symptoms might be saying. To use this app, the patient needs to answer a series of easy questions, and then the app measures against similar cases collected during general practitioner visits.
However, one of the most innovative uses of big data in medical tech today would be the collaboration between Israel’s Maccabi HMO’s MK&M Big Data Science Institute and IBM. The project aims to assist doctors in automatically identifying breast cancer using mammography images from HMO’s database, which then teaches computers how to detect breast cancer in images. The system analyzes millions of images and then looks for lesions, markings, and other characteristics that could indicate cancer presence.
These advanced systems and others like them have the ability to eliminate diseases, provide effective treatment for patients, reduce costs, assist medical professionals, and relieve human misery. As a community, we should be excited to embrace this new, ever-evolving tech.
Another valuable resource available to our physicians is the Emerald Coast Medical Association member meetings. In these meetings, you will learn new information, meet fellow medical professionals, and have the ability to present your own views and concerns.
