How social media sites are rapidly doing unique research on large cohorts
It has become commonplace for people to use social media to share their healthcare stories, seek a community of individuals with the same diseases, and learn about treatment options. All this...
Jan, 02, 2012
Hidden Markov models estimate DNA loop kinetics
The hidden Markov model—a statistical model used for decades in fields as diverse as speech recognition and climatology—has received an update and a new application. Researchers at the...
Apr, 01, 2007
An exploration of data-driven and process-driven approaches to data privacy
Trust. It’s the basis of every patient/physician interaction: Shared personal health information is kept confidential and used only for the patient’s benefit. It’s a tradition that...
Jan, 02, 2012
Defining biomedical computation
Looking back at some of the intellectual achievements of the last half century, it is clear that humankind has made tremendous progress in many areas, but arguably none more so than in the two areas...
Jun, 01, 2005
How errors in data, software, and methodology can teach us how to do better
In 2006, a paper in Nature Medicine suggested a novel and potentially revolutionary method for predicting patient responses to cancer therapies using gene signatures. The finding piqued the interest...
Sep, 01, 2011
Can the complexities of biology be boiled down to Amazon.com-style recommendations? The examples here suggest possible pathways to an intelligent healthcare system with big data at its core.
“We have recommendations for you,” announces the website Amazon.com each time a customer signs in.
This mega-retailer analyzes billions of customers’ purchases—nearly $...
Jan, 02, 2012
The first four National Centers for Biomedical Computing take off
WHY NATIONAL CENTERS?
Four National Centers for Biomedical Computing were launched by the NIH in 2004 with $20 million in funding for each center over five years. The reason: We need to make...
Jun, 01, 2005
Transparent peer review, replication studies, and journals of negative results all suggest change is on the horizon
As I was writing this editorial, I learned about yet another scientific paper being retracted. This time it was a genetics paper in Science, one of the hundreds of retractions that the blog...
Sep, 01, 2011
While science educators actively debate the relative merits of teaching natural science in an integrated fashion, some authors are writing texts that will make it happen. Philip Nelson’s book,...
Jun, 01, 2005
A combination of genomics data and molecular dynamics modeling is sufficient to predict protein complex structure
The zone where two proteins interact presents a possible target for drug design. But identifying possible drugs requires a detailed understanding of the interface between the proteins. Computer...
Apr, 01, 2010