Medical

The health informatics revolution

12th December 2016
Enaie Azambuja
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Using massive data sets, machine learning, and high-performance computing, health analytics and informatics is drawing us closer to the holy grail of health care: precision medicine, which promises diagnosis and treatment tailored to individual patients. The information, including findings from the latest peer-reviewed studies, will arrive on the desktops and mobile devices of clinicians in health care facilities large and small through a new generation of decision-support systems.

“There are massive implications over the coming decade for how informatics will change the way care is delivered, and probably more so for how care is experienced by patients,” said Jon Duke, M.D., director of Georgia Tech’s Center for Health Analytics and Informatics.

“By providing data both behind the scenes and as part of efforts to change behavior, informatics is facilitating our ability to understand patients at smaller population levels. This will allow us to focus our diagnostic paths and treatments much better than we could before.”

At Georgia Tech, health informatics researchers are partnering with both public- and private-sector organisations to develop and apply transformative technology that will connect incompatible systems and analyse vast data sets. This technology also will help clinicians track the latest research, potentially shortening the time required to move health care advances into practice.

“Our goal is to be directly involved with that health care transformation and to be one of the contributors focusing on what technology can do well,” said Steve Rushing, senior strategic advisor for health extension services at Georgia Tech.

“Technology has to be leveraged in a way that will meet the goals of improving the quality of care, bettering the patient experience, and addressing the rising cost of health care.”

Georgia Tech’s health informatics effort combines academic researchers in computing and the biosciences, practitioners familiar with the challenges of the medical community, extension personnel who understand the issues private companies face, and engineers and data scientists with expertise in building and operating secure networks tapping massive databases.

“It takes all of these components to really make a difference in an area as complex as health informatics,” said Margaret Wagner Dahl, Georgia Tech’s associate vice president for information technology and analytics.

“This integrated approach allows us to add value to collaborators as diverse as pharmaceutical companies, health care providers, large private employers, and federal agencies.”

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