Big data to help patients at health centre

The way patients and their families receive healthcare services in the future could change, thanks to a new study being undertaken by UOIT.

Teaming up with the Southlake Regional Health Centre in Newmarket, York University and IBM Canada, the $34.5-million health informatics research program will look at how to cut down on all the noise so that doctors can get to the beat of what is wrong and how best to treat it.

“In a neonatal intensive care unit, an infant might have more than 7,000 heartbeats, 2,000 breaths and 3,600 blood oxygen saturations in just one hour. But even in that specialized environment, today’s medical devices provide physicians with information that is too voluminous and too detailed for the human mind to process without significant support,” states Dr. Carolyn McGregor, the Canada Research Chair in health informatics at UOIT, states in a news release.

“Through Artemis, Big Data analytics can monitor multiple real-time vital signs 24/7, detect subtle changes in a patient’s condition and be predictive of major health events.”

The university’s portion of the program will see it use the Artemis Big Data Platform, which allows healthcare workers to better analyze complex data, therefore leading to better healthcare choices.