Pompano Beach, FL – April 20: Dr. Emlyn Lewis talks to Julia Herrera as she examines her. … [+]
Healthcare data has traditionally been generated from information gained through health tests, but this form of data collection often fails to contribute to true preventative care. Healthcare systems and data are designed to treat patients, but patients ultimately want to return to being normal human beings.
But what if health systems and practitioners started including information like where a person lives, how much time they spend on social media, and even whether they have pets? Using this data, they could get a more accurate picture of a person’s health and needs.
Fast and relatively easy access to medical data, including electronic health records, clinical information, and surveys, gives doctors almost complete information about their patients’ health and well-being. Yet medical data, as currently defined, says very little about a patient’s lifestyle, relationships, exercise habits, or diet, even though this form of “life data” can reveal a lot about a patient’s blood pressure, lipid profile, medical history, and more.
Considering this, perhaps the scope of current medical data collection is too narrow.
Why everyday life matters
Life data can transform healthcare professionals’ ability to plan precise long-term treatment strategies. For example, medical data doesn’t typically include information about whether a patient has a pet. This can be crucial, as research shows that pets can play a major role in improving cardiovascular health through stress reduction.
The medical form also omits some questions about other important life data, such as:
- How strong are the relationships between the patient and their family and friends?
- What is your current diet like? Are you vegan/vegetarian/pescatarian?
- How long have they been married or single? Does marital status affect their health issues?
Research shows that information gained by asking questions like the ones above can lead to more accurate diagnoses and better treatment outcomes. It can also provide deeper insights into health, aging, education, and many other aspects of human life, and ultimately show relationships between health, behavior, and other conditions. By broadening the definition of health data, healthcare providers can gain a clearer picture of their patients’ health status and vulnerability to certain diseases.
Make life better
Incorporating life data into data collection will enable better, individualized preventive interventions, such as genome-based personalized guidance on nutrition and exercise. This will help increase human health span for years to come. Using life data will promote health care that emphasizes prevention, wellness, and scientific advances. These are important health themes that our health care system cannot afford to ignore.
Life data, enhanced by technological innovations, can create even greater opportunities. The possibilities for digital transformation are endless, especially at the crucial stage of data collection and analysis. This is where “big data” comes in – a term that describes the ability to make sense of the world’s ever-growing volumes of data, used to analyze vast amounts of medical records to predict disease, improve treatment, and more.
As our data processing capabilities improve and the devices that collect that data become smaller than ever before, the possibilities for collecting and understanding this data become enormous. Big data may also lead to new approaches to prevention, early detection, and treatment of diseases around the world.
However, in the current digital health landscape, data privacy cannot be ignored: protecting data requires extensive privacy measures, including multiple rounds of encryption and firewalls.
Connection Information
There is no doubt that big data will continue to drive healthcare transformation. As healthcare moves from a task-driven model focused on disease and behavior management to patient-centric care, life data will become even more critical to improving and maintaining the health of millions of patients.
While vital data still exists outside of patient records, it is slowly becoming part of the healthcare discussion and there are currently small-scale tests and pilots being conducted to bring vital data into clinical practice. The problem, however, is that data is stored in disconnected silos and we need a system that connects the information meaningfully to healthcare.
To truly create, harness and act on big data, all data sources must be linked to improve knowledge, care and quality of life.