This week Ira “Gus” Hunt, the CIA’s chief technology officer, spoke about the importance of leveraging data for the Agency’s mission at the GigaOM’s Structure:Data conference. He noted that, “the value of any piece of information is only known when you can connect it with something else that arrives at a future point in time. Since you can’t connect dots you don’t have, it drives us into a mode of, we fundamentally try to collect everything and hang on to it forever.”
In health care, the Wall Street Journal reports that UC San Francisco is planning a major study on preventing and managing heart diseases using real-time data (rather than in-person clinical data) collected about volunteers using their smartphones, social media data, and special sensors. Individuals interested in participating can sign-up on the project website.
The Institute for Health Technology Transformation released a report “Transforming Health Care Through Big Data” which outlines opportunities for using data in health care, current challenges, and recommendations for how to better benefit from the use of data.