From Stars to Patients: Lessons from Space Science and Astrophysics for Health Care Informatics

TL;DR

This paper explores how techniques and lessons from space science and astrophysics can be applied to advance health care informatics by leveraging Big Data solutions proven in those fields.

Contribution

It demonstrates the potential of transferring methodologies from astronomy and space science to address Big Data challenges in health care informatics.

Findings

Successful adaptation of Virtual Observatory framework for health data

Examples from NCI EDRN project show improved data sharing

Cross-domain solutions save effort and resources

Abstract

Big Data are revolutionizing nearly every aspect of the modern society. One area where this can have a profound positive societal impact is the field of Health Care Informatics (HCI), which faces many challenges. The key idea behind this study is: can we use some of the experience and technical and methodological solutions from the fields that have successfully adapted to the Big Data era, namely astronomy and space science, to help accelerate the progress of HCI? We illustrate this with examples from the Virtual Observatory framework, and the NCI EDRN project. An effective sharing and reuse of tools, methods, and experiences from different fields can save a lot of effort, time, and expense. HCI can thus benefit from the proven solutions to big data challenges from other domains.