[grow_thumb image=”https://telecareaware.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/BlueSiloCollapsing-41.jpg” thumb_width=”175″ /]Awash in a rising sea of data generated by devices and analytics–around treatments, population health, costs–there’s a struggle to make sense of it. We’ve noted the high value and merchandisability of 23andme‘s genomic data (gained by individual user consent) [TTA 5 Mar], but our healthcare institutions which should be codifying and sharing disease and treatment data, largely do not. Those with rare or ‘orphan’ diseases struggle to find information, diagnosis, fellow patients, treatments. They sometimes win breakthroughs by, believe it or not, blogging, and having their articles widely disseminated. Reasons why? According to David Shaywitz in Forbes, they are:

• Hospitals, even research based centers, struggle to codify their genotype and phenotype data of their patients in a meaningful way that would be usable for clinical decision making. We’ve also noted (oddly not Mr Shaywitz) the long implementation process of IBM Watson cognitive processing/decision making tools in healthcare, the concentration on single diseases and their spread into other industries plus third-party integration outside of healthcare [TTA 9 Oct 14].  (more…)