Hospital Medicine: Hospitalists and Big Data




The Hospitalist show

Summary: This month’s feature offers some perspective on how data analytics can inform medicine. Following up a presentation they prepared on the topic at HM14 in March, hospitalist David Meltzer, MD, and data scientist Rayid Ghani, both at the University of Chicago, discuss their interest in big data. Mr. Ghani expounds on what he sees as the social good inherent in analyzing large data sets that hospital medicine procures, and tells why he thinks data literacy should be required learning. Dr. Meltzer shares his observations about data infrastructure and collection in the hospital, while noting that using big data to solve riddles about public health and medical care is a practice that’s still in its infancy. Dr. Meltzer and Mr. Ghani also discuss their collaborative effort at the University of Chicago called Chicago LEARN—the Learning Effectiveness Advancement Research Network—which recently won a Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute grant.