Life as a Health Data Scientist

What if we could build personalized digital twins that can identify anomalous health events that lead to cancer, suggest lifestyle changes to avoid high-risk states, and, when needed, instigate early diagnostic steps? what if the clinician and the cancer patient could jointly explore personalized risks, benefits and side effects and choose the best treatment plan using the patient's digital twin? These and other questions were explored in an intense 5-day Idea Lab organized by the  National Cancer Institute , the  Department of Energy and   the  Frederick National Labs for Cancer Research . Imagine this scenario On the day a person hears of his/her cancer diagnosis, a digital twin of the patient is instantiated by the clinical team. Over time, multi-modal, individualized data from genetic, environment and social factors are fed to the digital twin to create an accurate representation of the current state of the cancer patient. Clinicians then use High performance computing to simu

Dear friends, This is part 4 in my blogpost series titled "Not all news about COVID-19 is bad" where I attempt to capture scientifically-rigorous, evidence-based, and data-driven synthesis of promising news items and peer-reviewed articles relating to the COVID-19 global pandemic. My goal is to present topics in health care, life sciences and health IT in a simple language for anyone who may be interested. I prioritize current topics from medical/scientific literature and social media that overlap with the interests of folks in my personal and professional networks. You can read part 1 , part 2 and part 3 of this series here. In today's post, I review two topics that were requested by some of you on how the COVID-19 pandemic might end and the race to a vaccine. In addition, I review some of the latest Artificial Intelligence tools that are poised to help with COVID-19. 1. How might COVID-19 pandemic come to an end? The island-nation of New Zealand declared th

Dear friends, This is part 3 in my blogpost series titled " Not all news about COVID-19 is bad"  where I attempt to capture scientifically-rigorous, evidence-based, and data-driven synthesis of promising news items and peer-reviewed articles relating to the COVID-19 global pandemic. My goal is to present topics in health care, life sciences and health IT in a simple language for anyone who may be interested. I prioritize current topics from medical/scientific literature and social media that overlap with the interests of folks in my personal and professional networks. You can read part 1 and part 2  of this series here . In this post, I review contact tracing, saliva-based rapid test for COVID , open COVID clinical trials platform and COVID-19 State-by-state testing data and plans for reopening in the US. Exhibit 1: Aarogya Setu - Indian Government's contract tracing mobile App 1. Apple and Google are partnering on contact tracing . How often do we see thes

As a not-so-regular blogger, I was delighted to see >1000 views/reads of my post from last week -  Not all news about COVID-19 is bad: as a data scientist, here is what you can do to help . This has inspired me to write another post on reliable good news backed by data-driven science regarding  COVID-19 in a simple language that anyone interested can understand. Amidst all the dire reports that focus on worst case scenarios, people are coming together (mostly virtually or following distancing guidelines ) to do many amazing things during these strange times. The following good news caught my attention and I wish to share them here: Remdesivir is working in patients with severe COVID-19.   Remdesivir  is an anti-viral drug Exhibit 1. Clinical improvements were seen in all age groups in the study developed by Gilead Sciences that is showing benefits in patients with severe COVID-19. In a recent  study  published in the highly-reputed New England Journal of Medicine,

"Life will not be contained.... life will find a way " so aptly said by Dr. Ian Malcolm, a fictional character who is a mathematician specializing in Chaos theory in the 1993 movie Jurassic Park, has a new meaning for all of us during these times of the COVID-19 pandemic. Even though we are surrounded by fear, anxiety and confusion around how bad this pandemic will get and how long until we are free to live our lives as we did before the pandemic, I am confident that together, we will find a way. There are many reasons for hope and optimism and here is why: Treatments are starting to show benefit.  The US Food and Drug Administration has  approved  the use of plasma from recovered patients to treat people who are critically ill with COVID-19; while clinical trials are needed, this treatment had  dramatic improvement  in ventilator-dependent COVID-19 patients. While still anecdotal and requires well-controlled clinical trials, there is some evidence that Malaria drugs, 

Tapping into India major talent pool to solve global healthcare challenges in research and delivery Major healthcare challenges India is facing right now As of this writing, India's population is 1,373,837,462 which makes up 17.7% of the world's population. The Indian healthcare system has had its share of victories over the last few decades. India has been Polio-free since 2014; this is significant as the county accounted for more than 50% of Polio cases worldwide in 2009. Life expectancy, infant mortality rate (IMR), and maternal mortality rate (MMR) have improved due to increasing penetration of healthcare services across India, extensive health campaigns, sanitation drives, increase in the number of government and private hospitals in India, improved immunization, growing literacy etc. Yet, a huge disparity in the availability of healthcare resources continues to plague India. Dr. Kasthuri from St. John's Medical College in Bengaluru describes the five &quo