Big Data for Health and Care - UHasselt Summer School of 2023
From 22 until 26 May 2023, the first UHasselt Summer School on Big Data for Health and Care was organized by Liesbet M. Peeters and her team of the Research Group in Biomedical Data Sciences (Big Data for Health and Care - Summer School). The Summer School gave some fascinating insights on the potential of big data to revolutionize the way we approach healthcare challenges.
The increasing availability of healthcare data will have the potential to gain new insights into disease prevention, diagnosis, crisis management, and treatment. Consequently, the power of big data in healthcare can make a meaningful impact on patient outcomes and how we deal with our healthcare challenges on a national and European scale.
Many thanks to Liesbet Peeters and her colleagues for organizing this inspiring and exciting week. Many thanks also to Noëlla Pierlet (ZOL) and Peter De Jaeger (AZ Delta), to name a few, for the inspiring discussions. It was a pleasure to exchange ideas and inspiration with colleagues from other hospitals.
One of the take-home messages for me is the importance of standardization of data and analytical systems, which brings me to a few examples such as SNOMED CT, ICD-10-CM, ICD-10-PCS, WHO-FIC, LOINC, process mining, and the creation of an (inter-)national federated system of OHDSI OMOP CDM databases. Let us also remember to deal with data safety, security, privacy, and confidentiality as essential to dealing with healthcare data (GDPR, ethics).
