Partnerships drive data analytics ahead

The Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT just held its fifth annual Consumer Health IT Summit and data, analytics and patients were at the center of several sessions.

D.J. Patil, PhD, the White House’s chief data scientist, said data science is impacting many aspects of our lives. He cited the "cone of probability" used in weather forecasting. Twenty years ago, they didn't think people could handle probability but now "this is what we expect. We expect to see the data and we expect the data to be useful."

Data-driven organizations capture data and take in data extremely efficiently--cheap, fast and with utility. These organizations look at the data to create efficiencies and then use data to build innovations, he noted. 

Meanwhile, healthcare providers and other organizations continue to partner to advance data analytics. Healthcare is one of four areas targeted by the University of Michigan's $100 million, five-year big data initiative.

The university's Data Science Initiative aims to improve personalized healthcare delivery with data sources such as DNA sequencing and EHRs to increase accuracy of patients' risk of certain diseases and improve treatments.

And, the FDA has released a vast amount of medical device data to its openFDA platform.

The openFDA initiative originated with an order from the White House calling for federal agencies to make government information more accessible to the public.

Since its launch, openFDA has added to a growing list of APIs, with endpoints related to drugs, devices and food.

The agency hopes the new information will "spur innovation and advance scientific research," according to information posted on its website.

There's sure to be more to come.

Beth Walsh

Clinical Innovation + Technology editor