How Big Data Could Transform The Health Care Industry

Emerging technologies are paving the way to the personalized medicine of the future.
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Data scientist Dr. Eric Schadt is on a mission to revolutionize health care.

Leveraging the power of new technologies and mobile devices, he thinks the healthcare industry can be transformed the way Uber and AirBnB transformed the taxi and hotel industries.

“The biggest medical systems are going to own no hospitals,” Schadt, who is the director of the Icahn Institute for Genomics and Multiscale Biology at Mount Sinai, said in an interview for HuffPost’s new video series, Experimenters. “It’s going to be devices that are monitoring the lives of millions of patients simultaneously, that are looking to see if you have the beginning signs of cancer emerging ― not to treat the cancer, but to prevent the cancer from ever emerging.”

Sound like a pipe dream? Not necessarily, says Schadt.

In this type of system, algorithms would be used to both detect early signs of disease and treat symptoms. One major benefit is that this would allow doctors to personalize care, Schadt says. Handheld devices equipped to monitor things like weight and blood pressure ― and even more sophisticated devices like bluetooth-equipped inhalers ― would provide doctors with detailed health information that could then be measured against your genetic profile to inform treatments.

“We’re going to have individualized models for each person that maps out their health course trajectory,” Schadt said. “The ultimate end game is you have this personalized therapy specifically tuned to who you are and the stuff that’s going on inside of you.”

Check out the video above to take a closer look at the big data-enabled healthcare of the future.

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