Data and health
The reason healthcare is one of Data Science’s top customers is that it has been generating massive amounts of data for years, and now is the time to push this data to limits that have yet to be unlocked. From precision drugs to advanced wearable devices to modern drug discovery methods, data science is changing the way we understand healthcare today. Here are some factors of how data science is creating wonders in the healthcare industry:
- Development of new drugs: Medicines are the reason people go to hospitals, and you will be surprised to learn that every single medicine you see in a store has been developed through many years of continuous research and large investments. And sadly, many of the newly discovered drugs turn out to be failures. With the help of Data Science, laboratories can now reduce the time and energy required to develop new drugs. We can combine case studies, treatment records, test results, etc., and use machine learning algorithms to create simulations that tell us in advance whether a drug will work in the human body. Not only this, but we can also predict how the genes in our body will be affected by the drug. This will not only increase the speed of the investigation, but also reduce the waste of money.
- Advanced Portable Devices: Wearable devices are now ready to become our newest health protectors. They can give us regular updates on our health status and that of our family members and record the data for future reference. In addition, they can detect even the slightest disturbance in the functioning of our body system and inform us immediately. They can detect diseases even before symptoms appear.
- Diagnosis: It is a sad truth that even after the development of modern technologies, thousands of inaccurate diagnoses occur each year. There is enough data to avoid these errors, but traditional techniques are not able to exploit the data. With the help of Data Science, we can now perform extensive medical tests and analyze a large amount of data to make accurate diagnoses in almost no time. This is also helping doctors detect chronic diseases at very early stages.
- Precision drugs: If we look at the traditional methods of medical science, we will find that there are various sets of problems and that particular tests and drugs have been assigned to them. In this way, a particular test or drug is prescribed in all related diseases. With Data Science, it is now possible to understand the exact problem and design drugs and dosages accordingly.
- Developing cures for incurable diseases: A great deal of money and energy is being invested in developing cures for inaccurate diseases around the world. Data science is helping them come together and share each other’s studies, and this will ultimately increase the speed of investigations. The time is not far off when we will have a cure for each and every disease on the planet.