The human body is so complex that it’s estimated every person generates two terabytes
of data every day.
If health care experts could gather and study that data, they could pinpoint ways
for people and communities to be healthier.
“We’re not collecting one-hundredth of that data yet,” says Banky Olatosi, an associate
professor in health services policy and management at USC’s Arnold School of Public
Health. “If we’re able to find a way to collect that data, it will have a very big
impact on being able to deal with your health,” he says, noting that it would lead
to precise, personalized diagnoses.
Because data will play such a large role in the future of health care, the University
of South Carolina launched the Big Data Health Science Center in 2019. The center held its fifth annual Big Data Health Science Conference in February,
which attracted almost 100 presenters from five countries and 269 attendees. This
was the first year the conference was partially sponsored by the National Institutes
of Health.
“It shows how much the center and conference has grown to be nationally recognized,”
Olatosi says of the NIH’s involvement.
Around 30 institutions were represented at the Columbia Metropolitan Convention Center,
including universities, governmental organizations, industry and health care partners.
“Year after year, our satisfaction surveys show attendees believe this conference
is a great size in terms of not getting lost in your crowd,” says Big Data Health
Science Center managing director Miranda Nixon.
“It’s small enough where you can have an individualized experience, but large enough
where you can really network and form collaborations that you traditionally wouldn’t
have,” she says.
Their common calling: to accelerate cutting-edge research and discovery.
Professor Xiaoming Li, who is the USC SmartState Endowed Chair for Clinical Translational
Research, points to the variety of specific data types that were discussed.
“The conference covers artificial Intelligence and sensing, electronic health record
data, social media data, genomic data, geospatial data,” Li says. “Also as part of
the learning opportunities, we have student teams from across the nation, including
our USC teams, compete over a 24-hour period to come up with analytical solutions
to real data and real health issues they were given.”
Olatosi and Li are the co-leaders of the Big Data Health Science Center, and they
know the challenges and opportunities on the horizon.
Here’s the big picture for what’s next for the Big Data Health Science Center and
its supporters.
Olatosi explains that big data can be used for disease management, prediction and
treatment.
“COVID-19 was the clearest example of the use of big data for health care, for active
surveillance to see what’s happening in real time, and to track the impacts of the
virus across different geographical locations,” he says.
“Real time active surveillance is continuing to grow. It gives us the opportunity
to intervene in people’s health care and their lives,” he says. “Data that’s been
collected can be mined for interventions in the future.”
For the chronic diseases that afflict so many Americans such as diabetes or cardiovascular
disease, big data can identify those who are most at risk, and then help tailor their
lifestyle like nutrition and their diet and their food to improve their health.
We’ve already started seeing advances where based on your speech, we can predict whether
you’re going to have cognitive decline in the future. And that’s a precursor to being
able to then diagnose whether you’re going to be at risk for Alzheimer’s or other
dementias.
Banky Olatosi, USC associate professor in health services policy and management and
co-leader of the Big Data Health Science Center
We’ve already started seeing advances where based on your speech, we can predict whether
you’re going to have cognitive decline in the future. And that’s a precursor to being
able to then diagnose whether you’re going to be at risk for Alzheimer’s or other
dementias.
Olatosi notes that despite advances in what data can now tell researchers, there still
must be dialogue with those seeking care.
“Long COVID is the only disease condition in our lifetime that was discovered by patients,”
he says. “They were the ones who said there’s something going on. The health community
was like, ‘No, it’s all in your head.’”
Those patients then formed online support groups where they could share their symptoms
and experiences.
“The academic community saw that and said, ‘Maybe there is something,’ and then it
translated to find the scientific basis of it,” Olatosi says.
Big data analysis requires that researchers know where data is and the steps for retrieving
it. First, they must get permission to access it in a way that ensures patient privacy.
Next, they must identify whether the data is usable in the form it’s delivered. Then
they’ll create a schedule for when the data will be updated.
Most data remains siloed among different data owners. That necessitates negotiations
for access to data in order to see a fuller picture.
“Ideally, in the future, we’ll be able to get real-time data,” Olatosi says. “But
we’re not at that point yet. Because data has to be cleaned and verified.”
A prime example is insurance claims data. “Every service that you receive in a health
care facility has a billing code attached to it,” Olatosi says. Most groups will not
release the data until as much as three to six months after the patient’s visit to
allow for if there were mistakes in the billing or disputed claims.
“It’s messy,” Olatosi says. “All of it has to be reprocessed and goes back and forth,
because if they give you that data in real time, it will have errors baked into it.
And whatever you do with that data would also have errors.”
Data access remains a landscape that is not completely free of barriers. Researchers
find themselves working to reduce those barriers while maintaining patient confidentiality
and data security.
“It’s not helpful when we hear about data breaches and how that impacts trust in AI,”
Olatosi says. “There are risks associated with accessing data.”
Researchers can now use neuroimaging, or MRI, to predict someone’s likelihood of having
a future disease. Say you get a scan to detect for a specific symptom. In the past,
that imaging data would be filed away and forgotten. Now, AI can learn from that image
and can compare to other patients how an undetected disease condition is progressing.
“From that image, we can create an algorithm that once it sees your image, whether
you’re at the beginning stage, or you’re in the middle stage, they can predict for
you what your likelihood is of having this condition in the future, Olatosi says.
Embedded in Artificial Intelligence are large language models (LLMs), the most famous
of which is ChatGPT. Big data researchers will be using ChatGPT and similar LLMs in
a massive way. And the entry point will be chatbots and similar automated services.
“Most people don’t like to deal with automated services,” Olatosi says. “But those
automated services are going to be very, very powerful going on in the future. Because
they are going to be listening to your tone, they are going to be listening to your
voice, they are going to detect whether you’re sad.”
With their large capacity to quickly process information, LLMs will be in a position
to make prognoses.
“We’ve already started seeing advances where based on your speech, we can predict
whether you’re going to have cognitive decline in the future,” Olatosi says, “and
that’s a precursor to being able to then diagnose whether you’re going to be at risk
for Alzheimer’s or other dementias.”
One of the biggest challenges in the way of realizing big data success in health care
is workforce. Historically, researchers in AI and data science attracted the attention
of the financial industry.
“We don’t have enough people in this area,” Olatosi says. “The people with the skill
sets that we need are in high demand in other industries that pay way more than health
care can afford.”
That’s why the center maintains workforce training pipeline programs. They start at
the undergraduate level with training that targets their development in the hopes
that they’ll want to continue to the master’s level. At the doctoral level, a program
targets pre-doctoral training, and there is support for junior faculty as well.
There is also training for community scholars. “That is, talking to people from the
community to learn about what this is, not be afraid of it and then become champions
in their own community on the benefits of this,” Olatosi says.
“Without that workforce, you’re not going to be able to grow as quickly as you want
in this area,” he says.
The dedication of USC’s students was realized when a team won the annual conference’s
24-hour student competition for the first time. Each school’s team was presented with
real data to address analytical solutions for real health issues.
“They loved it. We were proud,” Olatosi says. “They’re very competitive. They don’t
sleep well during the taxing competition, which is ironic because this year’s study
was on sleep.”
The next Big Data Health Science Conference will be Feb. 13-14, 2025, when it moves
to a Thursday-Friday time frame at the Pastides Alumni Center.
Olatosi is looking forward to how all the advances in research for technology, data
analysis, patient engagement and workforce will be coming together.
“Eventually, we’re going to have the capacity to really get all the data occurring
in you in real time,” he says. “And that’s going to be a game-changer for precision
medicine.”
Topics:
Students, Faculty, Research, Health Sciences, Arnold School of Public Health