The Medical Big Data Race is on…

I have a tongue twister for you. Can you say Cancer Collaborative Cloud as quickly as you can? I'm sure it is bound to improve your pronunciation and fluency. Just kidding! However, on a more serious note, Intel has stepped up to the plate with a software initiative that will provide cancer researchers an opportunity to share sequenced genomes and medical images. More big data coming our way!

There has been a lot of activity in the so-called Age of Personalized Medicine within the last several weeks. You have the potential acquisition of Merge Healthcare Inc. by IBM, which will further enhance the Watson super computer with 30 billion medical images that will be used to train and provide deep learning and possibly identify ailments such as cancer and heart disease. Furthermore, it has been projected that U.S. citizens will spend about $4.5 trillion dollars on health care by the year 2019. This is a potential pot of gold accumulating at the end of a digital rainbow.

Intra-Medical Collaboration

The Collaborative Cancer Cloud was created by Intel and the Knight Cancer Institute at Oregon Health & Science University (OHSU) specifically for cancer research based on a cloud-computing platform. Intel states that this idea has been in the hopper for more than two years and was tailored specifically to decode the root causes of cancer and other complex diseases. The goal was to build a cloud computing platform where organizations could access and swap data hosted within a shared data center. It will go full-blown as the Collaborative Cancer Cloud next year when they expect two new organizations to join. The names of those two organizations are not yet released.

Discovery Peak – Climbing a Mountain of Data

Intel created a data analytics software platform called Discovery Peak. Discovery Peak will assist with processing health records in the Collaborative Cancer Cloud. According to Bob Rogers, PhD, Chief Data Scientist for Big Data Solutions at Intel, “By streamlining the process of assembling Big Data tools and automating the many steps required to build Big Data applications and publish them, Discovery Peak significantly simplifies my life as a data scientist. As a result, I am more agile in my ability to create valuable data models and tools that help businesses understand their products and customers, and ultimately make better business decisions. The trusted analytics platform brings me one big step closer to accomplishing my mission.”

In the spirit of keeping my fellow Data Protection cohorts informed, please

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Demetrius Malbrough is an expert in solving Data Protection challenges for small, medium and enterprise companies. He holds multiple Backup and Recovery certifications with major software leaders represented in the Gartner Magic Quadrant for Backup / Recovery Software. Demetrius is passionate about providing solutions to help companies meet demanding data protection objectives in the face of data’s changing paradigm in the Copy Data Management market.