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Introduction to Data Science for Health Care Professionals
As scientific research is becoming increasingly data driven, the field of data science is emerging to address the challenges in finding insights from massive datasets, particularly in the health-related world. At Octave Bioscience, we are surfacing clinical intelligence through data driven methods in the pursuit of advancing health care delivery for chronic neurodegenerative diseases. How data science contributes to mitigating cost, improving patient experience, or advancing outcomes (The Triple Aim) is the chief aim of this series.
Journal of Clinical Pathways has provided Octave Bioscience (aka Octave) with the opportunity to lead its readers in an exploration of data science and the various roles it can play in health care. Our team of data scientists, engineers, clinical providers, molecular biomarker researchers, pathway developers, and neuroimaging scientists will demonstrate how data science can contribute to value-based health care. We will survey algorithms, review research articles, summarize conferences, describe tools of the trade, and consider the trials and tribulations that highlight the experimental challenges of integrating data science into clinical efforts.
Who is Octave Bioscience?
Octave is dedicated to improving the journey of patients with neurodegenerative diseases, starting with multiple sclerosis (MS). We focus on MRI imaging analytics, molecular biomarker discovery, and discovering meaningful signals and patterns in clinical data from different sources such as patient sensors, web portals, mobile apps, and electronic medical records. Octave leverages this knowledge to surface clinical intelligence and provide concierge support to patients, their families, and clinical teams Octave's patient care program fills the gap between office visits by providing a comprehensive MS resource that is always by your side: real-time communication with an MS-certified nurse surrounded by a system of digital dashboards and a mobile application to track symptoms, medication adherence, and adverse events.
We are deliberate in our recruitment of amazing individuals because we recognize that combining both humans and technology (ie, human-tech) is integral in addressing the obvious and latent complexity found in health care challenges. The authors of this blog are established developers of clinical pathways, data scientist and engineers, biomedical researchers, neuroradiologists, and nurses.
What to Expect in Our Blogs
Each blog post will focus on some aspect of data science and how it applies to, or impacts, health care delivery for neurodegenerative and chronic diseases. Throughout the series, we will introduce readers to various technical topics and provide a scientific review that will engage all audiences, regardless of background. Our intent is to tie the practice of data science to clinical pathways, both directly and through contextual connection. Occasionally, we will diverge from presenting a topic and will instead review current literature, research, conferences, or other sources that provide insight into the value of data science in health care delivery. At the end of each blog post, we will briefly explain why this topic was chosen, provide relevant references, and present the topic for our next blog post.
In our next blog post, we will begin to define what data science means in the context of healthcare management. At its root, this will be an exercise in collecting the right information and using that information to make probabilistically good decisions that benefit patients and use the finite resources of our health care system most beneficially.
About David Hughes
David Hughes is the Principal Machine Learning Data Engineer for Octave Bioscience. He develops cloud-based architectures and solutions for surfacing clinical intelligence from complex medical data. He leverages his interest in graph based data and population analytics to support data science efforts. David is using his experience leading clinical pathways initiatives in oncology to facilitate stakeholder engagement in the development of pathways in neurodegenerative diseases. With Octave, he is building a data driven platform for improving patient experience, mitigating cost, and advancing health care delivery for patients and families.
About Octave Bioscience
The challenges for MS are significant, the issues are overwhelming, and the needs are mostly unmet. That is why Octave is creating a comprehensive, measurement driven Care Management Platform for MS. Our team is developing novel measurement tools that feed into structured analytical data models to improve patient management decisions, create better outcomes and lower costs. We are focused on neurodegenerative diseases starting with MS.
