Using Big Data to Give Patients Control of Their Own Health

Big data, personalized medicine, artificial intelligence. String these three buzzphrases together, and what do you have? A system that may revolutionize the future of healthcare, by bringing sophisticated health data directly to patients for them to ponder, digest, and act upon--and potentially stop diseases in their tracks. At Singularity University's Exponential Medicine conference in San Diego this week, Dr. Ran Balicer, director of the Clalit Research Institute in Israel, painted a futuristic picture of how big data can merge with personalized healthcare into an app-based system in which the patient is in control. Picture this: instead of going to a physician with your ailments, your doctor calls you with some bad news: "Within six hours, you're going to have a heart attack. So why don't you come into the clinic and we can fix that."