Untethered Healthcare

More and more healthcare innovation  thought leaders seem to be challenging the closed nature of most scientific research and the fact that most scientific data is not shared. Even the journal Nature devoted an issue recently to the need for openness in research and why scientists don’t share data well. Cambridge economist Rufus Pollock sums it up well : “The best thing to do with your data will be thought of by someone else.” Start-ups like NextBio are trying to address the problem by creating platforms for scientific data sharing and analysis. They are also providing value-add by hiring research scientists to curate data sets, both public and private. The dictionary says a curator “manages or supervises a collection, as in a museum or library”. In a world overloaded with information, digital curation also implies some amount of sifting and direction of attention. Curation is playing a larger role in journalism. Some tech journalists are staying away from splashy events like the iPad rollout, in favor of curating the swarm of tweets from people onsite and calling execs in real-time for reactions — essentially creating their own personal war room to get a better overall view.

The rise of digital curation bodes well for healthcare, as does the rising interest in applying open innovation to healthcare problems. Developing and bringing a new diagnostic parameter  to market requires massive investments in data collection. If even a portion of this data were available publicly, development costs and time to market would go down. The best example I’ve seen of the time-to-market benefits of this approach is the work being done at the Myelin Repair Foundation. Ways to address the sharing problem seem to be related to creating a culture of sharing and mechanisms for managing how data is shared, particularly by competitors, prior to going to market.

Any other thoughts on how to do this?