The Imperative of Big Data in Public Health Transformation

As healthcare comes online, both structured and unstructured data accumulate in physician offices, hospital data centers, regional health information exchanges, health registries, and state and federal repositories. Major medical centers are now combining genomic data with the wealth of clinical data already routinely available. Faster processors, mobile technology, devices, sensors, cloud computing and cheap storage have enabled a new data tsunami of personal data that will dwarf all the data collected by clinicians. This talk at the 2012 State Healthcare IT Connect Summit by Charles Safran, MD, MS Chief Division of Clinical Informatics, Harvard Medical Faculty Physicians, and BIDMC Associate Professor of Medicine Harvard Medical School, discusses new opportunities as well as challenges for public health provided by Big Data. [video works best in Firefox and Chrome] PDF of presentation is HERE

http://statehitconnectmediaportal.com/view_media.php?mid=163

Charlie Safran is a primary care internist who has devoted his professional career to improving patient care through the creative use of informatics. He is Chief of the Division of Clinical Informatics, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and Associate Professor of Medicine Harvard Medical School. He is the past President and Chairman of American Medical Informatics Association was previously Vice-President of the International Medical Informatics Association. He is an elected fellow of both the American College of Medical Informatics and the American College of Physicians.

Dr. Safran is co-Editor of the International Journal of Medical Informatics and on the Health on the Net (HON) Foundation Council. During his career he has helped develop and deploy large institutional integrated clinical computing systems, electronic health records, clinical decision support systems to help clinicians treat patients with HIV/AIDS and most recently personal care support systems for parents with premature infants which he calls collaborative healthware. He founded a company, Clinician Support Technology and as it’s CEO successfully brought his ideas to a national market. The company’s products and technology were acquired by a major public company. He has over 150 publications and speaks to national and international audiences. He has testified for the U.S. Congress on Health IT. He graduated cum laude in Mathematics and hold a Masters degree in mathematical logic and a Doctor of Medicine all from Tufts University.