Drowning In Data

Abstract

Biomedical researchers are beginning to tap into a gold mine of nontraditional sources of data to unravel some of the complexities of human diseases, especially common diseases for which there is significant interplay between genetic variants and environmental stressors. But so much data are being generated from so many different disciplines that it is a challenge to integrate it all. Efforts are now under way at the National Institutes of Health to tackle this big data problem. The agency recently announced plans to spend approximately $100 million per year over the next seven years to develop a common data-sharing framework and to start training graduate students in quantitative skills. The idea is to promote data integration across disciplines, merging everything from electronic health records to environmental data. “The last decade or so has seen some fairly impressive technological developments in areas like genomics, imaging, environmental monitoring, and many areas of ...