The digital transformation is in full swing not only in everyday life, but also in medicine, and is taking on ever more precise features. The need to not only store large amounts of data, but also to use it, has long been recognized.
Every day, several terabytes of data are produced in Switzerland alone. Every individual contributes to this through the use of a smartphone. In comparison, medicine is still in its infancy. Even large hospitals like the German Charité store only 2.5 terabytes of data per day. However, these have so far been lying unused on the servers. That’s about to change. The problem, however, lies in the lack of standardization. In order to work with images, examination results and documents, they must be digitally retrievable. The necessary structuring and linking of the individual data with standard terminologies are not yet available. A medical informatics initiative has now set its sights on a data exchange platform for structured and standardized documentation and the creation of a Virtual Oncology Center to share knowledge and connect with public data sources.
The potential uses would be many. Smart analytics approaches could provide clinicians with transsectoral and longitudinal data and improve quality assurance. Patients would be able to access their data at any time, have more information at their fingertips, a greater range of studies and a gain in convenience.
Future precision medicine
Preclinical laboratories are also working flat out on the future. The introduction of second-generation sequencing technologies enabled cross-platform omics technologies. With the novel high-throughput methods, the entire genome, transcriptome or proteome of a cell can be captured. They enable global, high-resolution molecular profiling of cells, tissues and tumors in a short time and have thus fundamentally changed the study of biological systems. A first step towards precision medicine that will have a long-term impact in the clinic.
Source: Annual Meeting of the German-Speaking Societies of Hematology and Medical Oncology (DGHO) 2019
InFo ONCOLOGY & HEMATOLOGY 2019; 7(6): 24 (published 12/5/19, ahead of print).
