Times are changing in the medical field. It is becoming less about treating patients immediately or diagnosing them just based on tests. Now, future doctors of America are being trained to look at big data to spot health trends that may be surrounding patients to better treat them.
Learning how to access and assess all this data is not an easy task. That’s why New York University’s medical school is taking extra time to ensure their future doctors are trained on how to look at data to more effectively care for their patients. According to NPR, every first and second year med student at NYU must complete a “health by numbers” project. They are given anonymous medical records of New York patients, neither patient or doctor names are disclosed. The records are from the practices of facility at NYU. The students look closely at the measures taken for things like heart failure, diabetes, high blood pressure, etc.
The data can be used for all sorts of things, not just medical diagnosis trends. One student, Micah Timen, compared prices changes based on location of a Whopper sandwich from Burger King to a hip replacement surgery in the state of New York. The results found that the margins are wider for the price of a medical surgery than a burger. This means that many patients are paying more for their hip replacement surgery in some places that go outside the general geography statistics.
Two other students looked into the price of cesarean surgeries in New York, and as well came back with widely varying numbers. The trend of having medical students learn health data is spreading rapidly. NYU is offering its database to other medical schools, and seven of them are already using it today. This new wave of learning will bring skilled doctors into the workforce that cannot only diagnose their patients, but can treat their patients based on data found for that specific diagnosis.
This data learning could not have come at a better time. Since the ICD-10 release early in October, specific codes have increased by 54,000 compared to the ICD-9. This not only benefits the process of keeping medical records, but benefits how researchers look at the data. It will be much easier to track certain trends and record findings.
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