Health Datapalooza Day 2 Recap

Posted by Mahria Lebow on June 7th, 2012 Posted in: News from NLM, Technology

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Yesterday was Day 2 of the Health Data Initiative’s Datapalooza.  If you missed the recap of Day 1, you should check it out here.  Sadly, my ability to view and relate to you the morning plenary of Day 2 was marred by the live webcast going offline about an hour into the event.  However, before that happened I was able to catch one funny misunderstanding, Kathleen Sebelius’s take on the importance of data in healthcare reform and a demonstration of the decision support tool Archimedes IndiGO.

Thomas Goetz, executive editor of Wired magazine moderated Wednesday morning’s events.  He opened by talking about how he has taken to calling neglected and unused data “latent data,” noting that one important aspect of events like Datapalooza is illustrating the power of harnessing latent data.  The first speaker of the morning, Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius, took the stage next declaring that we need to take the “lazy data” and make it work.  Goetz, when he returned, remarked that Sebelius had definitely improved on his terminology by referring to unused data as lazy.  Beyond phrase coining, Sebelius spoke to the need for the government to support innovations in the field of health care, specifically through a rewards based system.  She referenced the federal government’s financial incentives for providers to adopt Electronic Health Record systems (EHRs) and tied this back to Datapalooza noting that “if EHRs are the vehicle, then data is the fuel.”

I was able to catch one App Demo before the broadcast went dark, and that was for IndiGo Archimedes.  This application is designed to help create individualized patient guidelines.  The problem the program aims to address is that historically clinical guidelines are on the clunky side because they are intended to be applied to the population, not to people, and often only take single risk factors into account (i.e. achieve blood pressure less than 120/80), which is an overly simplistic way of conceptualizing how the human body functions.  IndiGo is designed to do what clinicians innately do, to bring together multiple variables/risk factors that an individual may have, to create personalized guidelines and treatment plans.  If you are wondering what the value added is if the clinician is already doing this, the app graphically renders the predicted effects of various treatments on the patient’s health, enhancing communication between provider and patient.  So far IndiGo has been shown to have both high clinician and patient acceptance, in addition to improving health outcomes and adherence to care plans.

If you feel unsatisfied with only reccaps, recorded versions of for all of Tuesday’s Datapalooza and the part of Wednesday described above is now available to watch over at livestream!