Big Data: What’s the Big Deal?

During his opening keynote address at the 2018 Cardiovascular Nursing Symposium, Eric D. Peterson, MD, MPH, FAHA, FACC will take on the topic of “Big Data and the Future of Cardiovascular Disease Prevention and Treatment”.

So, what is big data? It is the combination of electronic medical records with disparate sources of information including administrative claims, biosensor information, social media and imaging, genomic, and metabolic data. The advantage of big data is that information now locked in individual databases can now be more broadly shared, leading to collaborative opportunities and ultimately, hopefully important breakthroughs in disease prevention and treatment.

Dr. Peterson is the Fred Cobb, Distinguished Professor of Medicine in the Division of Cardiology, a DukeMed Scholar, and the Executive Director of the Duke Clinical Research Institute (DCRI). Dr. Peterson is a recognized leader in outcomes and quality research, with over 1000 peer-reviewed publications in the field. Dr. Peterson is the Principal Investigator of the NHLBI’s Coordinating Center for its Outcome Research Network, and the AHRQ Cardiovascular Center for Education and Research on Therapeutics (CERTs).  He is also the PI of the Data Coordinating Centers’ for the Society of Thoracic Surgeons (STS) National Cardiac Surgery Database, the American College of Cardiology’s National Cardiac Database (ACC-NCDR) and the American Heart Association’s Get With the Guidelines Database (AHA GWTG).