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 ...

"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 M...

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 ...

The Problem Brain cancer is the tenth leading cause of death among both men and women. They are also the second most common cancer among children of age 0-14. Most of the time, we don't understand what caused a person's brain tumor but research has shown that factors such as age, family history, exposure to certain chemicals, radiation and certain viral infections may increase the risk of developing brain cancers. Successfully treating brain cancers can be very challenging due to the blood-brain barrier that keeps treatments out or the location of the tumor in the brain may prohibit surgery to avoid further complications. Malignant brain tumors such as Glioblastomas are treated with chemotherapy or radiation which prolong a patient's life only by a few months. Recently, many famous people including Senator John McCain and Vice President Joe Biden's son Beau Biden, who were diagnosed with this disease, and their families have tried to increase awareness and resea...

Korean K-MASTER protocol Funded in 2017 for 5 years with $70M by the Korean Ministry of Health and Welfare and the Ministry of Science, Information and Communication Technology, K-MASTER aims to position Korea as a global leader of Precision Medicine based cancer treatment. This and other precision oncology efforts were the center of discussions at the 12th annual meeting of the Korean Society of Medical Oncology in Seoul last week. Through Next Generation Sequencing based tissue panel and liquid biopsy platform for cancer diagnostics, the program will profile the cancer genome of 10,000 patients and match eligible patients to 20 pre-selected clinical trials. Ongoing trials in K-MASTER include Disease-Biomarker-Drug combinations of: CRC-MSI high-Avelumab, Any Solid-PIK3CA-Sirolimus, NSCLC-EGFR-Gifitinib, Any solid-dDDR-Nivolumab, Any solid-MET-Tepotinib, Any solid-High TMB-Nivolumab+Ipilimumab combo, Her2+ Breast-PIK3CA-Trastuzumab and Salivary-Her2-Nanoxel. Clinical Util...

Sherine El-Toukhy, PhD, MA, NIH Distinguished Scholar, National Institute on Minority Health & Health Disparities "Can digital health technologies alleviate health disparities?" was the topic of our special interest group panel discussion at the National Academy of Medicine (NAM) Annual Meeting , organized by Lucile Adams-Campbell , Head of Minority Health and Health Disparities at Georgetown University, at the Academies yesterday - a rainy Sunday afternoon..perfect weather for some hot tea and a thoughtful discussion. The AHRQ  publishes the National Healthcare Quality and Disparities Report annually to assess the performance of our healthcare system and disparities based on measures of quality and access.  The report summarized that over 50% of measures that assessed access to healthcare from 2000 to 2017 showed improvement; 33% did not change and 14% showed worsening. Quality of care improved overall but pace of improvement varied with only 1/3rd of care...