Health

A few weeks ago Colin Hansen - a politician in the governing party in British Columbia (BC) - penned an op-ed in the Vancouver Sun entitled Unlocking our data to save lives. It's a paper both the current government and opposition should read, as it is filled with some very promising ideas.

In it, he notes that BC has one of the best collections of health data anywhere in the world and that, data mining these records could yield patterns - like longitudinal adverse affects when drugs are combined or the correlations between diseases - that could save billions as well as improve health care outcomes. » Read more

At the first annual SwitchPoint Conference, we’ll bring together some of the best minds in innovation from a broad range of fields and ask them to apply their best thinking to the critical challenge of global health. What kinds of people? Inventors, industry greats, tech, open source, and mobile superstars, multi-disciplinary entrepreneurs, academics, crisis responders, innovators, brand makers, communication specialists, community builders, and funders—the people who can combine their skills to make a difference in global health. » Read more

Last Monday I had the pleasure of being in Mexico City for the OECD's (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development) High Level Meeting on e-Government. CIO's from a number of countries were present - including Australia, Canada, the UK and Mexico (among others). But what really got me going was a presentation by Chris Vein, the Deputy United States Chief Technology Officer for Government Innovation. » Read more

I finally got around to watching Moneyball this week. Great film. Roger Ebert points out that the film "isn't so much about sports as about the war between intuition and statistics." (I'll let you guess who wins if you haven't seen the movie). The main character was neither Billy Beane (Brad Pitt) nor Peter Brand (Jonah Hill) so much as a set of algorithms the Billy and Peter characters implemented to build a winning baseball team at low cost. I'll go out on a limb and declare it the greatest statistics movie ever. (It's a short list of great statistics movies.)

And it's timely. » Read more