Circulatory Health magazine

Big Data @ Heart:
Sharing data and
discovering trends
The explosive growth in the quantity of
digital data in our society is the new
driver of innovation. This also applies to
Big Data @ Heart. "We are living in a
world full of fragmented data files, but
once you share them, you pave the way
for answering clinical questions within a
short time frame."
With his current research, cardiologist
in training and clinical epidemiologist,
Stefan Koudstaal seeks to unravel the
patterns that exist in the years prior to
discovering that patients suffer from
cardiac failure. What are the type of
complaints that prompt them to go see
a doctor? Or what type of medication
have they been prescribed? Stefan:
"We hope to find the answers to these
questions at Big Data @ Heart over the
next few years."
What are these big data exactly? Stefan:
"To us, these are large quantities of data
that are not stored in a standardized
manner. They are basically very rough
data on a lot of patients. They are not
suitable for in-depth conclusions, but
we can use them to look at certain
patterns that help us identify diseases
earlier and treat them better. At Big
Data @ Heart, we study these patterns
using data from Great Britain, Sweden,
Spain and the Netherlands. Data from
Sweden and Great Britain have already
been compared as to the chances of
survival after an acute myocardial
infarction. These were corrected for
how ill patients were when they were
32 Circulatory Health Magazine