Current events

Empowering citizens and organizations with data science

Photo: UOC

22/10/2018
Teresa Bau

 

Chatting with Jordi Conesa (@Jordi_Conesa), coordinator of the eHealth Center's health data science in Health knowledge area, he explained to us how he is working to democratize data science and make it available to the general population. With a background in e-learning data research, Jordi is now applying his knowledge to eHealth. The eHealth Center's ambitious goal is to foster societal change through understanding the value of data, and to help citizens make healthcare decisions based on data analysis. “One way to promote this change is through citizen education”, explained Conesa. “We will organize free, open-access courses so that people can see the impact that data analysis can have on their everyday lives.”

“We already have access to a large number of data that we can analyse manually. For example, there are apps that we can use to keep a record of what we do, what we eat, how we feel, our social activity, etc. We can also access our electronic medical records and open-access data sources that enable us to take into account other potentially relevant aspects, such as the weather, noise pollution or environmental pollution. If we make good use of these data, we can easily discover that whenever we eat a certain type of food, it interferes with our sleep; or we can learn what behavioural/dietary changes have made our cholesterol levels increase; or we can even find personal and environmental factors that affect us at different levels, for example, backache, our ability to concentrate, stress or irritability. If we use data science, we can perform this basic analysis of our daily lives much more thoroughly and with a much greater quantity of data”, Conesa explained. The knowledge that we can gain from analysing this information may spark a new paradigm that is less focused on treating diseases (the prevailing paradigm until now) and more focused on providing personalized preventive care.

As well as empowering citizens, the eHealth Center will also offer training to organizations so that they can learn how to obtain value from the data they generate. Again, the focus aims to be eminently societal: “Our goal is not to become data analysts for organizations but to put tools in professionals' hands so that they can learn to do it for themselves”, he stated.

The same idea of democratizing data and making them more accessible can be seen in the Arrow Methodology, a project in which the UOC eHealth Center seeks to facilitate the interoperability of medical data from different sources. Other projects that his team is working on include a study of the different types of international standards to ascertain which are used most, by whom and for what purpose; analyse national self-perceived health surveys with the goal of gaining a better understanding of our perception of health; and determine the factors that make us feel healthier. They are also working on a study on the level of training being offered worldwide in computing and data science in the context of digital medicine, as well as other more specific projects aimed at producing a societal impact, such as creating low-cost ophthalmological equipment to contribute to its democratization, using mobile technologies, 3D printers, and other devices.

Raising awareness of the power of data

As a project with a social focus, the eHealth Center is also opening collaborations with data-related citizen projects. One such case is the Salus data cooperative, born in Barcelona, whose goal is to legitimize citizens' rights to control their data and facilitate data exchange in order to accelerate medical research and innovation.

Conesa is aware of the challenges to be addressed using people's medical data. “Apart from privacy and security issues, we must also ask ourselves what is entailed in allowing access to our data for research. If an organization gets a financial return from data, I should be able to decide how I want to benefit from the value of my data. The important thing is that people are aware of this value and, with this awareness, decide how they want to use their data”.

The eHealth Center's forward-thinking projects in data science include collaborations with organizations that have large data banks, in which the UOC will provide its know-how on data analysis, analytic information systems and vision with the aim of improving the population's health. This project will involve cross-disciplinary teams including physicians, psychologists, data scientists and patients. The eHealth Center’s focus on health and on the individual patient and citizen, rather than on disease, is also present in their work on data science.