| | September 20188CIOReviewIN MYPINIONBOOSTING THE ODDS OF CREATING VALUE FROM DATA INTEGRATIONBy Erich S. Huang, MD, PhD, Assistant Dean of Biomedical Informatics, and Michael Pencina, PhD, Vice Dean for Data Science and Information Technology, Duke University School of MedicineWhen we bring together large sets of data from different sources, our goal clearly is to expose an important insight that surpasses the sum of information in those various parts. In our case, that insight hopefully improves people's health and lives and the ways we deliver health care. Certainly, data integration in any field requires resources ­ time, money, technology, even intellectual capital. In our experience, increasing the likelihood that those investments pay off lies in a few key considerations.First, the most valuable insights may come from data that is disparate, not simply different. We need to be able to answer not only questions that can be probed by bringing together more of the same sorts of data, but also data that stretches the context from which the answer arises. In health care, this means reaching beyond electronic health records and claims data. Humans act as filters of many contexts ­ genomic, psychological, socio-economic and others ­ in which they exist; the state of their health is the result. If we consider only data created by their interactions with the health care system, we risk missing the actual determinants of health. Typically, medical When we bring together large sets of data from different sources, our goal clearly is to expose an important insight that surpasses the sum of information in those various parts Erich S. Huang
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