Big Data: What Every Rheumatologist Should Know

Healio Rheumatology—July 19, 2017

Healio Rheumatology featured HSS chief value medical officer Catherine H. MacLean, MD, PhD in an article about the benefits of big data for rheumatology. Dr. MacLean explained that while the concept is not new, sources of data are now becoming more available.

Dr. MacLean stated that big data could potentially have long-term impacts for rheumatology as well as other specialties. "I think the big wins are that there will be data on more people. For rheumatology, that is particularly important because there are some fairly low-prevalence, low-incidence diseases, like scleroderma for example," she said.

Another impact of big data, according to Dr. MacLean, will be to better understand rheumatic diseases that are organized into large groups, such as rheumatoid arthritis or lupus. "There is a huge disease spectrum within each of those diseases, I would say more so with lupus, and big data may help us to parse out specific clinical subsets of patients [who] might respond differently to different types of therapy."

"It is going to give us the ability, over the long term, to look at those additional data elements so we can do a better job sub-setting out particular patient groups who have combinations of characteristics that we are not thinking about now," she added.

Read the full article at healio.com [registration required].