Pushing Big Data to Rapidly Advance Patient Care

Technology offers a solution for moving research out of journals and into the clinic faster.

7:47 AM

Author | Kelly Malcom

Big Data

The breakneck pace of biomedical discovery is outstripping clinicians' ability to incorporate this new knowledge into practice. Charles Friedman, Ph.D. and his colleagues recently wrote an article in the Journal of General Internal Medicine about a possible way to approach this problem, one that will accelerate the movement of newly-generated evidence about the management of health and disease into practice that improves the health of patients.

Traditionally, it has taken many years, and even decades, for the knowledge produced from studies to change medical practice. For example, the authors note in the article, the use of clot-busting drugs for the treatment of heart attacks was delayed by as much as 20 years because of this inability to quickly incorporate new evidence.

"There are lots of reasons why new knowledge isn't being rapidly incorporated into practice," says Friedman. "If you have to read it in a journal, understand it, figure out what to do based on it, and fit that process into your busy day and complicated work flow, for a lot of practitioners, there's just not enough room for this."

LISTEN UP: Add the new Michigan Medicine News Break to your Alexa-enabled device, or subscribe to our daily audio updates on iTunesGoogle Play and Stitcher.

Informing medical practice

Much of the generation of new evidence is done by groups like the federal Agency for Healthcare Quality and Research and the Cochrane Collaboration, a UK-based non-profit group designed to organize medical research into systematic reviews and meta analyses. These reviews synthesize all of the available medical research about a given topic with the hope of informing medical practice. However, that movement of this accumulated knowledge to medical practice can happen incredibly slowly, if at all.

The new article focuses on the need to harness the power of technology to enable health systems to analyze the data they generate during the process of taking care of patients to generate new "local" evidence and use this in combination with published reviewed evidence to improve health outcomes.

The value of Big Data is to generate Big Knowledge.
Charles Friedman, Ph.D.

The key to using both types of evidence, they argue, is transforming human readable knowledge--the words, tables and figures in a typical journal article—into computable forms of that same knowledge.

MORE FROM THE LAB: Subscribe to our weekly newsletter

"A lot of scientific studies result in some kind of model: an equation, a guideline, a statistical relationship, or an algorithm. All of these kinds of models can be expressed as computer code that can automatically generate advice about a specific patient," Friedman explains.  When both "local" models and published models are available in computable forms, it is suddenly possible to generate advice that reflects both kinds of sources.

Computable forms are key

He notes that while Michigan Medicine, along with most other health systems that use electronic health records, is using its data to continuously improve quality of care, putting this knowledge in computable forms creates many new ways to apply that knowledge to improve care.

The University of Michigan Medical School's Department of Learning Health Sciences is taking the lead in transforming biomedical knowledge into computable forms that are open and accessible to anyone. They've created a computer platform called the Knowledge Grid, that stores computable knowledge in digital libraries and then uses that knowledge to generate patient-specific advice.

"The value of Big Data is to generate Big Knowledge," says Friedman. "The power of Big Data is to provide better models. If all those models do is sit in journal articles, no one's going to be any healthier."


More Articles About: Lab Report Basic Science and Laboratory Research Education Future Think Health Care Quality All Research Topics
Health Lab word mark overlaying blue cells
Health Lab

Explore a variety of health care news & stories by visiting the Health Lab home page for more articles.

Media Contact Public Relations

Department of Communication at Michigan Medicine

[email protected]

734-764-2220

Stay Informed

Want top health & research news weekly? Sign up for Health Lab’s newsletters today!

Subscribe
Featured News & Stories orange cells floating squiggly lines coming out of it with blurred blue and purple colors
Health Lab
Clinically deployed AI guidance for preventing C. difficile spread
AI guidance for clinicians aimed at reducing the spread of C.diff was deployed for the first time in a hospital setting, according to a University of Michigan-led study.
outline drawing of pancreas on beige screen with green orange yellow and pink
Health Lab
Avoiding recovery delays with hospitalized pancreatitis
Acute pancreatitis is among the most common gastrointestinal conditions requiring inpatient hospital care in the United States. Balancing the signaling of the interleukin-22 protein and interleukin-22 binding protein is crucial to recovery from acute and chronic pancreatitis.
algae green spread all over lake by forest edge from high view
Health Lab
Living near harmful algal blooms reduces life expectancy with ALS
Living close to cyanobacterial harmful algal blooms — which are present nationwide but are more common in coastal and Great Lake states — heightens the rate of dying from amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or ALS, a study suggests.
ultrasound on skin
Health Lab
Simple muscle ultrasound may detect early prediabetes
A simple ultrasound of a patient’s thigh or shoulder muscle may detect insulin resistance before it progresses to type 2 diabetes or even prediabetes. In a study, Michigan Medicine researchers performed muscle ultrasounds on 25 patients who were also evaluated for insulin resistance.
teen by self in room listening to music and family with young kid eating out
Health Lab
Many parents struggle letting teens have independence on family vacations
One in five parents say they’ve never allowed their teen to be away from them during a trip.
stethoscope blue yellow
Health Lab
Researchers uncover novel mechanism that leads to high blood pressure
Researchers at Michigan Medicine have uncovered a key mechanism that regulates blood pressure and vascular remodeling in people with a genetic variant linked to high blood pressure.