The Future of Big Data, Machine Learning, and Clinical Medicine

By now, it's almost old news: big data will transform medicine. It's essential to remember, however, that data by themselves are useless. To be useful, data must be analyzed, interpreted, and acted on. Thus, it is algorithms -- not data sets -- that will prove transformative. We believe, therefore, that attention has to shift to new statistical tools from the field of machine learning that will be critical for anyone practicing medicine in the 21st century.