Unification of Big Data would benefit medical practitioners and stakeholders by enabling them to optimise useful information, thereby enhancing the creation of technologies and accessible services, and aiding the customisation of medical treatment.
This was recommended at an expert session hosted by Qatar Science and Technology Park (QSTP) on ‘Big Data Analytics: Revolutionising Healthcare,’ as part of its TECHtalk series.
The event aimed to address the importance of data analytics in changing the face of modern healthcare and fostering technological advancement in the fields of ICT and health.
Big Data is a term used to describe a massive volume of both structured and unstructured data that is difficult to process using traditional database and software techniques.
Commenting on the subject, and QSTP’s role in bringing together industry experts to inspire further technological research and innovation, managing director Hamad al-Kuwari, pointed out that Big Data analytics is becoming increasingly vital for businesses, institutions and individuals to make smart and efficient decisions, especially in an area as important as healthcare.
Guest speaker Dr Michele Ceccarelli, acting research director of Bioinformatics at Qatar Computing Research Institute (QCRI), presented his work on cancer genomics, which encompasses developing novel tools and algorithms for gene expression data analysis, gene network analysis, and identification of structural genomics alteration.
According to Dr Ceccarelli, the average hospital generates an estimated 665TB of data annually, but 80% of this data currently remains unstructured. Looking at how Big Data is transforming medicine, a collection of large and complex data sets are difficult to process using common database management tools or traditional data processing applications.
Technology solutions are, therefore, required in the areas of data analysis, capture, data curation, search, sharing, storage, transfer, visualisation, querying and information privacy. To this end, the need to use Big Data correctly in healthcare and biomedical research is tightly connected to the importance of integrating all sources of medical information through the right technology.
In his presentation, Dr Ceccarelli highlighted that the importance of Big Data lies not only in the access to data, but how to make sense of this data. This requires new methods and tools of analyses to be continually developed and updated.
He noted that some of the key challenges in Big Data that experts face include the pre-processing and data normalisation, data integration, higher order methods and reproducibility research, as well as the development of rigorous quantitative and statistical methods.
Identifying contemporary sources of big data in health and medicine, the Professor listed drug research, genomics, patient records, social media, diagnostic test and home monitoring as some possible ones.
Dr Joel Malek, director, Genomics Core at Weill Cornell Medicine-Qatar and an expert on Next-Generation DNA sequencing technologies, insisted on the importance of identifying statistically meaningful resources that help with early detection of cancer rather than stratification of cancer patients. He said it is essential to address the hindrances to data immigration to ensure studied data is statistically correct and significant.
Bilal Sabbagh, healthcare associate partner at IBM Middle East and Africa, said it is no longer just about genes, but also about social behavioural patterns that define how diseases are taken in and reacted to.
