Elizabeth Leigh
Learning how to manage different sets of healthcare data to get insights may be more realistic than trying to get everyone to agree on one interoperable format, Dean Allemang writes in a March 24 piece on the Yarc Data blog.
Allemang believes survival tools are more appropriate given the current technical, political and business challenges that could impact medical research consolidation in future years.
“We do need to change our expectations of data management technology; we need (data) wilderness survival technology†such as graph databases, Allemang says.
Allemang is a consultant, entrepreneur and book author on the Semantic Web.
“In the wilderness, our queries won’t be simple and they don’t rely on a single data schema, so our survival technology will have to cope with more complexity and variety than before,†he added.
He cited the U.K.’s care.data medical research database project, which he writes could be scrapped due to public fears that the government may use personal information without the patient’s consent.
Technical issues include the vast scope of use cases, settings and standards involved in the field of medicine, Allemang says.
The Semantic Web movement advocates the use of common data formats on the World Wide Web.
