How Data and Data Analytics change healthcare, Dr. May D Wang
Data is changing healthcare. Health information systems deal with the entire pipeline of health related data from data capture/acquisition, information extraction, Data analytics and interpretation, presentation and decision support. We had the opportunity to talk with a distinguished guest Dr May D. Wang, Associate Professor at Georgia Institute of Technology and Emory University. In the first part Dr Wang gives an overview of the role of data in healthcare and some of the key challenges in adopting and exploiting the benefits of new information systems in healthcare. We talk about the increasing role of personal and personalized healthcare solutions, the stakeholder landscape and the importance of managing change in legacy healthcare environments and ecosystems. At the last part of this interview Dr. Wang talks about the extensive educational and training activities that are currently in progress: from online Master-level courses in bio-medical data analytics for young scientists to patient training and hospitals/physicians decision support systems. Interviewed by George Voulgaris for Tech Talks central.
May D. Wang, Dr.
Associate Professor of Biomedical Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology and Emory University
Dr. Wang’s primary research interest is in biomedical and health informatics for systems medicine, with the goal to accelerate and enable the discovery, development, and translation in modern biology, medicine, and healthcare. She has been publishing in journals such as Annals of Biomedical Eng, BMC Bioinformatics, Trends in Biotechnology, Nature Protocols, Proceedings of National Academy of Sciences, Annual Review of Medicine, The Pharmacogenomics Journal, Nature Biotechnology, and Genome Biology etc. Her team has developed multiple informatics software systems. Among these, caCORRECT and omniBiomarker have been certified by NCI caBIG as silver-level compatible. During 2005-2010, Dr. Wang has served as the director of Bioinformatics and Biocomputing Core in NCI sponsored Emory-Georgia Tech Center of Cancer Nanotechnology Excellence. In addition, she has played an active role in working groups of National Cancer Institute (NCI/NIH) cancer Biomedical Informatics Grid (caBIG) on nanoinformatics, and FDA-led Microarray Quality Control Consortium (MAQC) on investigating regulatory guideline for biomarker. Currently, she serves as co-chair of Information Technology for Health (ITH) Technical Committee (TC) in IEEE EMBS.
Dr. Wang received Distinguished Cancer Scholar Award from Georgia Cancer Coalition in 2004, an Outstanding Undergraduate Research Faculty Mentor Award from Georgia Tech in 2005, and an Outstanding Service Award from IEEE BIBE in 2007. Dr. Wang received Ph.D.EE, multidisciplinary MS degrees (EE, Applied Math, and CS) from Georgia Institute of Technology in USA, and BEng from Tsinghua University in China. In addition, Dr. Wang has several years of industrial R&D experience in the former AT&T Bell Labs, Intel Architecture Labs, Hughes Research Labs, Lucent Technologies Bell Labs, and Agere Systems.
Specialties: Big Data analytics, Health Decision and Clinical Decision Support System Development, Bio-Nanoinformatics
Interviewed at the MOBIHEALTH 2014, the 4th International Conference on Wireless Mobile Communication and Healthcare - "Transforming healthcare through innovations in mobile and wireless technologies", that took place in Athens, Greece, November 3–5, 2014