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Ask HN: What medical datasets do you need?

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Re: Ask HN: What medical datasets do you need?

#91
post #43

Combined phenotype/genotype datasets. These are (with some good reason) very difficult for anyone outside the medical-research establishment to get access to, but the net result is that it creates market barriers supporting the existing big players.

Not sure if this is exactly what you're after, but Gene2Phenotype has some genetic association data: https://www.ebi.ac.uk/gene2phenotype/downloads

Re: Ask HN: What medical datasets do you need?

#93

Anonymized patient records, preferrably with information about the doctor performing the diagnosis as well. I've only been able to find small datasets of some tens of thousands of records, I would like tens of millions. You can't learn much from what amounts to one small town's medical records, in terms of finding accurate diagnoses, or identify places and situations that result in better doctors.

>Anonymized patient records, preferrably with information about the doctor performing the diagnosis as well.

"Anonymized" is more like it ...

Re: Ask HN: What medical datasets do you need?

#94

OP: You need more doctor data. Given you have surgeon [x] what are odds of a successful surgery with [x]. THIS is the guarded secret -- yet the most valuable. If you have medical data (or want to be a cofounder) please email me :ransom1538 at gmail.com -- a prototype: https://www.opendoctor.io to find out data to this very question.

> Given you have surgeon [x] what are odds of a successful surgery with [x]. THIS is the guarded secret -- yet the most valuable.

What is a successful surgery? One with the least complications? No complications? Shortest recovery time? Best return to function? Best outcome for that particular patient?

It's not an easy question to answer.

Re: Ask HN: What medical datasets do you need?

#95

So, the last startup I was a fulltime engineer at actually worked in this area. What I would suggest to be maximally useful would be to focus on physiological data: EKG/ECG, EMG, glucose, SPO2, maybe various blood work counts. All of those are data that are both well-understood and are thrown away regularly, and that if fed into a computer with modern ML methods we could maybe see some really cool stuff. I'd suggest…

> I'd suggest staying away from unstructured data and things that are primarily of interest to only the business side of healthcare--insurance figures, billing codes, EMR/EHR shit.

I would argue these are the most important areas to target. We need tremendous reform in this area, and if we can demonstrate meaningful improvement over what we have now, maybe we can let doctors get back to actually treating patients and not spending the majority of their time checking boxes on a computer.

Re: Ask HN: What medical datasets do you need?

#96

Lyme disease frequency, given that the CDC grossly underestimated it (and admitted to that). [1] And frequency by state, especially in the Western States where it is under-diagnosed. [1] http://www.cbsnews.com/news/cdc-lyme-disease-rates-10-times-...

This is an excellent idea! Lyme disease has more uncertainty about it than most people realize.

Re: Ask HN: What medical datasets do you need?

#97

Dermatology, eye conditions, blood cells, tissue, viruses, urine, saliva, everything that can allow an app to give you a first diagnose before heading to the doctor. I foresee in less than ten years we will have a doctor in our pockets. No, it won't cure us and it won't replace a doctor, but it will give us all the information we need to have a 99% certainty of our condition. -- Second batch for animals and their con…

> everything that can allow an app to give you a first diagnose before heading to the doctor.

Why do you want to have the diagnosis before seeing a physician? (I'm legitimately interested in the answer.)

In my experience, it's about 50-50 with helping versus hurting making the correct diagnosis and providing accurate treatment.

Re: Ask HN: What medical datasets do you need?

#98
post #97

Dermatology, eye conditions, blood cells, tissue, viruses, urine, saliva, everything that can allow an app to give you a first diagnose before heading to the doctor. I foresee in less than ten years we will have a doctor in our pockets. No, it won't cure us and it won't replace a doctor, but it will give us all the information we need to have a 99% certainty of our condition. -- Second batch for animals and their con…

> everything that can allow an app to give you a first diagnose before heading to the doctor. Why do you want to have the diagnosis before seeing a physician? (I'm legitimately interested in the answer.) In my experience, it's about 50-50 with helping versus hurting making the correct diagnosis and providing accurate treatment.

Seeing a doctor can be expensive and inconvenient (another form of expensive).

Re: Ask HN: What medical datasets do you need?

#99
post #43

Combined phenotype/genotype datasets. These are (with some good reason) very difficult for anyone outside the medical-research establishment to get access to, but the net result is that it creates market barriers supporting the existing big players.

These are quite difficult to get (and very expensive to produce) even inside the medical-research establishment. Which big players are you referring to?

Large research universities and hospitals, Pharma, and, of course, the Broad.

I understand pharma not sharing but much of the hospital/broad/university data is produced with (at least some) public money.

Re: Ask HN: What medical datasets do you need?

#100

Please oh please, Chronic Fatigue Syndrome. The potential for ML is absolutely huge. Some people have already collected or are working to collect genetic and other data on a large scale [1] [2] [3], so it does exist. CFS is interesting because: a) Patients' symptoms appear to fluctuate "randomly" but are actually typically a complex function of genetics, blood markers, exercise, diet, medication and other factors. b)…

It also goes hand in hand with chronic anxiety and ADHD.
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