Why data is the future of healthcare
A growing number of studies around the world show that healthcare is steadily evolving into a science based on the analysis of mass data, on detecting the signs that make it possible to know, evaluate and eventually treat a person’s health problems preventively.
This is a transformation that will fundamentally affect the development of science and the knowledge we have about the functioning of the human organism and the diseases that afflict it, while at the same time drastically reducing the cost and functioning of health systems.
Moreover, the shift from health systems that treat diseases after symptoms are detected to personalized ones based on monitoring and preventive analysis before symptoms have appeared is expected to be the main vector of change that decide countries’ competitiveness.
This change will be wrought by two disciplines: genetic analysis and advanced data analytics through machine learning.
These are sciences that have been progressing for a long time, from the first human genome sequencing project to obtaining a complete genome without gaps last month. And on the other hand, the increasing availability of massive databases with genetic markers, either in private projects such as 23andMe, Ancestry.com, MyHeritage, etc., or in other public and open access projects, such as the so-called…
