Life as a Health Data Scientist

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,