Big Data and Dementia: Charting the Route Ahead for Research, Ethics, and Policy

Frontiers in Medicine

Marcello Ienca¹ 

关键词: dementia;    big data;    ethics;    health policy;    Alzheimer’;    s disease;    real-world evidence;    mild cognitive impairment;    m-health;   

DOI  :  10.3389/fmed.2018.00013

学科分类：医学（综合）

来源: Frontiers

【 摘 要 】

Emerging trends in pervasive computing and medical informatics are creating the possibility for large-scale collection, sharing, aggregation and analysis of unprecedented volumes of data, a phenomenon commonly known as big data. In this contribution, we review the existing scientific literature on big data approaches to dementia, as well as commercially available mobile-based applications in this domain. Our analysis suggests that big data approaches to dementia research and care hold promise for improving current preventive and predictive models, casting light on the etiology of the disease, enabling earlier diagnosis, optimizing resource allocation, and delivering more tailored treatments to patients with specific disease trajectories. Such promissory outlook, however, has not materialized yet, and raises a number of technical, scientific, ethical, and regulatory challenges. This paper provides an assessment of these challenges and charts the route ahead for research, ethics, and policy.

【 授权许可】

CC BY