The Lucky Years: How to Thrive in the Brave New World of Health by David B. Agus Page B
Authors: David B. Agus
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common antacids with PPIs and the chance of having a heart attack. The research was conducted after a report came out in 2013 in the journal Circulation that showed how PPIs could potentially lead to long-term cardiovascular disease on a molecular level: they change the lining of blood vessels. 4 Interestingly, patients who were prescribed another type of antacid that contains what are called H2 blockers had no increased likelihood of heart attack.
Antacids that contain PPIs are most often prescribed for digestive system issues, including gastroesophageal reflux disease (GERD). According to the FDA, 1 in 14 Americans has taken proton pump inhibitors, among the most commonly used drugs in the United States. So the results of this study are alarming, but keep in mind that they reflect an association—not causation. The people who take PPIs and experience heart trouble could have other health challenges that compound the problem, such as obesity, high blood pressure, and underlying genetic risk factors. Nevertheless, culling this kind of information from Big Datais part of our brave new world of medicine. It gives us more knowledge to consider in taking care of ourselves.
Let me give you one more example, one that’s already in action and changing the lives of millions. Just a few years ago, the University of Nottingham developed an app called MyBabyFace with the help of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. The problem: global infant mortality remains high at 22 per 1,000 live births—especially in countries where high-tech ultrasounds and skilled physicians are not readily available. The majority of these deaths occur because of bad math; it’s not easy calculating an accurate age for babies being born at an unknown gestation. Consequently, premature babies are not identified in a timely fashion, and we often miss the opportunity for simple, low-cost interventions that help avoid the complications related to being born premature, such as hypothermia. The MyBabyFace app leverages the power of crowdsourcing. Parents across the world upload a photo of their baby’s feet, face, and ears as well as the gestational age. The current purpose of the app is simply to collect data, and the hope is to develop a database to make it easier to judge a child’s time in the womb. Another app, Neogest, uses the depth of foot wrinkles and the roundness of the eyes as clues for gauging a baby’s degree of prematurity.
The Google Effect
What makes a data-mining tool like Google so brilliant is that it’s a constantly evolving, giant cataloging system—a way of organizing all the information on the internet. In the computer world, we call a data structure that holds enormous amounts of data coded in a way that allows one to quickly search and retrieve information a hash table. But Google does even better than, say, the hash table used by a massive library to arrange, store, and track books. Every time somebody searches the site, Google gets better at returning results, and the site grows ever stronger and more powerful. This kind of power will come into the health realm in the Lucky Years; there will be a hash tablefor genomics, proteomics, environmental factors (like living next to a freeway), lifestyle habits (like eating Paleo or smoking), as well as medical conditions (like being diabetic and allergic to shellfish). Every day I treat patients similar to the ones I saw the prior week; yet I am not improving the care I give or my recommendations based on knowledge culled from previous patients, because the system is not set up for that. But it will be soon. The power of the “Google” data approach is that my care going forward will improve with every patient I treat; the database will have increasingly more information upon which to base decisions, so that my patients and I can make better ones. A colossal amount of data is being collected: it’s been estimated that as much data is now generated in just two days of 2015 as was
Antacids that contain PPIs are most often prescribed for digestive system issues, including gastroesophageal reflux disease (GERD). According to the FDA, 1 in 14 Americans has taken proton pump inhibitors, among the most commonly used drugs in the United States. So the results of this study are alarming, but keep in mind that they reflect an association—not causation. The people who take PPIs and experience heart trouble could have other health challenges that compound the problem, such as obesity, high blood pressure, and underlying genetic risk factors. Nevertheless, culling this kind of information from Big Datais part of our brave new world of medicine. It gives us more knowledge to consider in taking care of ourselves.
Let me give you one more example, one that’s already in action and changing the lives of millions. Just a few years ago, the University of Nottingham developed an app called MyBabyFace with the help of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. The problem: global infant mortality remains high at 22 per 1,000 live births—especially in countries where high-tech ultrasounds and skilled physicians are not readily available. The majority of these deaths occur because of bad math; it’s not easy calculating an accurate age for babies being born at an unknown gestation. Consequently, premature babies are not identified in a timely fashion, and we often miss the opportunity for simple, low-cost interventions that help avoid the complications related to being born premature, such as hypothermia. The MyBabyFace app leverages the power of crowdsourcing. Parents across the world upload a photo of their baby’s feet, face, and ears as well as the gestational age. The current purpose of the app is simply to collect data, and the hope is to develop a database to make it easier to judge a child’s time in the womb. Another app, Neogest, uses the depth of foot wrinkles and the roundness of the eyes as clues for gauging a baby’s degree of prematurity.
The Google Effect
What makes a data-mining tool like Google so brilliant is that it’s a constantly evolving, giant cataloging system—a way of organizing all the information on the internet. In the computer world, we call a data structure that holds enormous amounts of data coded in a way that allows one to quickly search and retrieve information a hash table. But Google does even better than, say, the hash table used by a massive library to arrange, store, and track books. Every time somebody searches the site, Google gets better at returning results, and the site grows ever stronger and more powerful. This kind of power will come into the health realm in the Lucky Years; there will be a hash tablefor genomics, proteomics, environmental factors (like living next to a freeway), lifestyle habits (like eating Paleo or smoking), as well as medical conditions (like being diabetic and allergic to shellfish). Every day I treat patients similar to the ones I saw the prior week; yet I am not improving the care I give or my recommendations based on knowledge culled from previous patients, because the system is not set up for that. But it will be soon. The power of the “Google” data approach is that my care going forward will improve with every patient I treat; the database will have increasingly more information upon which to base decisions, so that my patients and I can make better ones. A colossal amount of data is being collected: it’s been estimated that as much data is now generated in just two days of 2015 as was
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