The use of big data in medicine is nothing new, we have seen it becoming more and more important across the world in recent years, but one area that few consider is how it could impact people on an individual level. This isn’t to say that it is going to help people with cancer to survive or to cure a huge number of other diseases, but having the ability to treat people in the best possible way for them.
Ironically, one of the ways this is being done is through the collection of huge amounts of data on as many people as possible. We have seen this with initiatives like the research partnership between DeepMind and Moorfields Eye Hospital in London, where the AI company has collected thousands of scans of people’s eyes to help identify particular conditions, which is likely to help with diagnostics and treatments for other patients in the future.
This same approach can be taken to millions of people, which may allow organizations to tailor treatment to specific people with similar conditions.
For instance, somebody may be suffering from a specific type of cancer which somebody else with a similar background, physiology, and demographic has been previously cured of. An organization then has the opportunity to see what treatments worked with this similar person and this may give them a good indication of what could work best for their patient. As the number of cases successfully treated and the number of case studies that can be fed into the system are increased, the treatments can be improved and the personalization for each patient can become more detailed.
What may have started as ‘this treatment works best for males between 18-25’ could eventually become ‘this treatment works best for males between 18-25 who don’t smoke or drink, have a family history of high blood pressure, and have never previously broken any bones’. The ability to drill down further into a patient’s history then allows for increased personalization of treatments, making them more and more effective.
However, it is not only in treatments that data can help to personalize medicine, there are also some really strong results showing how data can impact how and when people receive treatment or diagnosis.
One of clearest progressions has been in the use of wearables and remote tracking for patients, with programmes like the work currently being undertaken by the Michael J Fox foundation.
