I've worked on the problem of entering well modeled medical data for a decade and I have seen very slow improvement over that time. Not only is the overwhelming

I've worked on the problem of entering well modeled medical data for a decade and I have seen very slow improvement over that time. Not only is the overwhelming majority of medical data not in a proper data model, the data that is has most likely been subject to selective pressure (which will probably not be accounted for in most analyses). Once you have enough well structured data, the next challenge will be reducing the dimensionality taking into account the meaning of the data. The fact that a patient is diabetic, e.g., can be inferred from a specific diagnosis, a set of medications and several lab tests. It is a very promising field but I see non medical people entering it with a certain amount of cockiness.