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~ Musings on health, illness & evidence based medicine

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Tag Archives: big data

Big Data, Government and Cancer Research: A Benefit for Patients?

23 Tuesday Jul 2013

Posted by @JustOncology in health, oncology, research

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big data, cancer, clinicaltrials, dan munro, evidence based medicine, genomics, innovation, medicine, oncology, social media

By Gregg A. Masters, MPH

On the Wednesday, July 24th, 2013 broadcast of This Week in Oncology at 2PM Pacific/5PM Eastern our special guest is entrepreneur, social media thought leader and Forbes Contributor Dan Munro aka @danmunro.This Week in Oncology

Dan recently penned a piece for Forbes titled: ‘Big Government Opens Big Database For Cancer Research‘

This catchy headline caught my attention since part of our mission at This Week In Oncology is to eliminate the esoterica from ‘oncology-speak’ and to present the significance of the discoveries, trends and developments in the cancer care and dignostics in plain english for more general consumption.

Much progress has been realized in medica oncology of late with a fair amount of the promisesd upside of ‘personalized [or individualized] medicine’ often pointing to better outcomes via more targeted treatment of specific tumors based on their unique genetic signature.

So called ‘big data’ is in the news as ubiquitous technology, connectivity, the declining costs of massive data dragnets and disease specific mashups affords insights previously inaccessible to reseachers, clinicians and others interested in the diagnosis and/or treatment of oncology.

We’ll get Dan’s takes on his piece and see how he sees the confluence of these trends coming together for the benefits of patients.

To listen live or via archived replay, click here.

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The ‘incident’

My life was essentially on autopilot. My oncology practice was very successful; in fact, too successful. All my time and energy was devoted to keeping pace with the increasing demands of the profession. Other pursuits, be they personal or professional, always seemed to take a back seat. My main unfulfilled passion was writing.

On January 7, 2011, everything changed. I had a new bovine aortic valve and three new coronary artery grafts. A life altering event, to say the least. Fortunately my recovery has been uneventful, and I had no evidence of muscle injury. So I’m extremely grateful for the pre-emptive surgery, and since I’m back to work on a part time basis, I now can devote some of my attention to writing.

For the past several years, a colleague, trusted advisor and friend of mine, Gregg Masters, had been prodding me to “just do it”, i.e., just start blogging, podcasting and life streaming my experiences in Medicine. He pointed out the value of my 36 years in clinical practice of hematology and medical oncology as 'elder wisdom' currency in relative short supply. In truth, there is certainly a lot to write about as the clinical knowledge base has grown enormously, to the point where management of all this information requires computers. Fortunately, technology has developed at a rapid rate also so that we can not only mine all this data to obtain meaningful information, but better disseminate it to each other, health plans (including government) and especially our patients. With the advent of social media including Twitter, Facebook and You Tube, this flow of information becomes a two way street allowing physicians to listen as well as talk. On a personal note, my wife published daily status updates during my surgery and through the post-operative period on a website called Caringbridge. She posted pictures as well as narrative. Colleagues, relatives, friends and patients had a window opened to them as to how I was doing, and they in turn wrote back notes of encouragement that touched me deeply.

When Gregg and I thought about it, his background not only in 'web 2.0' (social media) but perhaps more significantly his considerable experience in the business aspects of medicine brings value into the conversation as well. In today’s environment, physicians are constantly reminded that we not only are responsible for all aspects of caring for patients, but we are running a business as well. Years ago, I remember reading an excellent book called “The E-Myth Physician” by Michael Gerber. One of the chapters was devoted to the subject of “Money”. So Gregg’s knowledge complements my clinical background resulting in the birth of JustOncology.com.

Certainly there is no shortage of topics to discuss. Utilizing a variety of media: blogging (which addresses my passion for writing), audio and visual interviews with as many of the stakeholders in cancer care as possible, we hope to provide a forum for discussion of problems facing us. From these interactions, the desired outcome is to identify solutions that can only come from a collaborative effort.

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About

JustOncology.com is a joint publication of Richard Just, MD, aka @chemosabe1 on Twitter and Gregg Masters, MPH, aka @2healthguru on Twitter.

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