Inside Information: Data is The New Oil

If data is the new oil, then the United States has its hands on the equivalent of a Deepwater Horizon. While your online spending habits are thoroughly captured, sifted through, analyzed, and used to identify what you want before you even know you want it, your personal health data is mostly lost. Just like with Deepwater Horizon, where only 17% of the oil was recovered, the vast majority of your health data is free and yet completely unattainable — unable to help make new drugs, predict better ways to manage disease, and perhaps even save your life.?

Here’s why: In the U.S., we have a random patchwork of data regulations across the country. As a result, some information-collection systems talk to each other while most don’t. These restrictive protections vary from state to state, city to city, and even hospital to hospital.??

Even though our medical data can be deidentified and anonymized — in other words, it is fully aligned with our privacy laws, and a patient’s personal identity and medical history are completely separated — the fractured system in the U.S. prevents invaluable medical information from being shared. Without access to consistent, high-quality patient data, medical breakthroughs are severely hindered and the ability to identify treatments for incurable diseases has become one of the most costly and inefficient endeavors in the world. Our lack of consistency in access to data has very tangible effects.?

At Valo, we are creating tools to translate patient data into meaningful insights. Last week, Valo announced a first-of-its-kind multiyear collaboration with Kahn-Sagol-Maccabi (KSM), the research and innovation center of Israel’s leading Health Maintenance Organization (HMO) – Maccabi Healthcare Services. Together, Valo and Maccabi KSM Research and Innovation’s Biobank will jointly conduct research leveraging Valo’s Opal Computational Platform? to identify preventive care and personalized medicine for patients.??

The collaboration between Valo and KSM’s Biobank, the largest in Israel and one of the most comprehensive and richest data sets globally, is expected to lead to innovative studies that analyze complex diseases, identify connections between diseases, predict new subpopulations within our current knowledge of diseases and generate new insights about disease treatment and prevention using Opal. KSM’s Biobank includes more than 800,000 de-identified biological samples of Maccabi member volunteers who have agreed to join the Biobank project promoting genetic research.

There is a growing recognition that by combining patient data and AI computing power we will be much better positioned to solve complicated medical issues. At Valo, we believe deeply that this is the only way that we will be able to make rapid progress against the diseases and conditions that kill countless numbers of beloved family, friends, and community members.??

Health data no doubt feels intensely personal for many. But our personal health data can be used for the greater good, helping researchers develop higher-quality medicines and treatments that will benefit everyone. (And let me restate this point: I’m talking about data that is fully anonymized and totally separated from a person’s identifying information.)?

?It’s worth stating the obvious, personal data is already being obtained for other uses. Endless effort is put into determining which toothpaste consumers want to buy based on their digital footprint. Google and Facebook can track your emotional state based on your online behavior. Every time you click “OK” on a website asking you if you want to accept “cookies,” you’re surrendering digital information.?

The future of drug discovery and development is unequivocally digital and patient data and AI-powered computation are at the center of this. Our world is changing dramatically every day, I am confident that as more innovative leaders such as KSM harness the power of AI-powered platforms like Valo’s Opal Platform, health information firewalls will continue to come down across the world. For once we will consistently have access to human data that fuels the creation of lifesaving medicines, instead of overwhelming our in-boxes with offers generated from our online purchases. The data is too valuable and so are people.??

David Berry is the founder and CEO of Valo Health?and a General Partner at Flagship Pioneering