The TED Talk I’m going to suggest today is only an example -a very good one- of how machine learning and big data can bring improvements to health conditions of patients of today and tomorrow. Discovering interactions and effects between 2 medications, merely through data analysis (study was confirmed in lab only at the end) open a lot of new scenarios for eHealth data scientists. Actually for everyone.
A very important aspect of studies mentioned by the author is that patients are telling their side effects indirectly through their web searches. And this is now something that FDA is monitoring constantly.
Russ Altman uses machine learning to better understand adverse effects of medication but the hope is also to find out how we can use the same data sources to find good effects of drugs in combination that will provide us new treatments, new insights into how drugs work and enable us to take care of our patients even better.
Enjoy the talk.