10 ms·
Google to Collect Data to Define Healthy Human
- yeukhon 12y agoIf they can truly protect the anonymity of donator data, I wouldn't mind to be part of it. Heck, when I donate my blood I am already giving a lot of information to the blood center and they know my blood type and can tell if I have certain diseases of not. When I volunteer to do bone marrow match test, I don't know how the firm handles my data. I supposed they can protect my data. I am not worried about Google knowing more about me or humans. I am more worried about how safe my records are with my clinics and hospitals. See [1] Lastly, personal question: how do you get into Google X? [1]: http://www.scmagazine.com/rhode-island-hospital-to-pay-150k-for-past-data-breach/article/362725/ http://www.scmagazine.com/rhode-island-hospital-to-pay-150k-...
- martythemaniak 12y agoI don't know how you get in, but you can apply to Google X by searching their jobs site for "Special Projects" or the specific project (for example "Makani", "Loon", etc)
- robrenaud 12y agoHave there been any reports of anything bad happening to any of those 12,000 people because of the leaked data?
- yeukhon 12y agosee the page linking to the release (http://www.mass.gov/ago/news-and-updates/press-releases/2014/2014-07-23-women-infants-hospital.html http://www.mass.gov/ago/news-and-updates/press-releases/2014...). But the tapes are missing so who knows :( I was just googling data breach for hospital; not rare.
- adrianN 12y agoI would be more worried that the results of these studies are not made freely available to everybody. I prefer having research funded by public money without seeking a profit.
- yeukhon 12y agoWhat do you mean they are funded by public money? I thought Google is paying a clinic to get samples and pay researchers to work on the project, but the researchers have to get approval from the review board of their respective institution. The review board is funded by public money (more or less) I guess, but other than that, what else?
- adrianN 12y agoAs I understand it, the researcher works for Google, so I suppose that his results belong to Google. Is this not the case?
- yeukhon 12y ago> I prefer having research funded by public money without seeking a profit. Now that I read what you wrote twice I might interpret your original sentence wrong. I thought you were implying the work they doing with Google is using public money ("I prefer research funded by public money [done by these researchers to be non-profit].") You meant you prefer to have public institutions to carry out the research. Well, in that case, it's only temporary. There are public and private AIDS research, but in the end, the public research is used to seek for profit. Say Google, IBM, Microsoft donates 10B to make this a non-profit research, the end product (the algorithms, etc) will be used by private companies anyway. So I don't see how public vs private really matter if the data and results are going to be publicly known by private company later on for profit. But if you are going for "pure knowledge", sure, public research would be ideal :D
- eerpini 12y agoanyone remember Gattaca ? well we could end up with data based classification version of that here !
- walterbell 12y agoA more mundane concern is insurance and financial (dis)incentives for behavior change, http://www.salon.com/2014/05/30/in_the_future_insurance_companies_will_make_sure_that_you_exercise/ http://www.salon.com/2014/05/30/in_the_future_insurance_comp... "23andMe Is Terrifying, But Not for the Reasons the FDA Thinks", https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6811167 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6811167 "23andme has suspended health-related genetic tests", https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6859732 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6859732 "A problem with much statistical analysis is ignoring the fact that humans, umm, react to things around them. (Social science jargon for this is reflexivity). I know this seems so simple, but it’s amazing how much predictive analytics don’t factor this in.", https://medium.com/message/learning-from-natesilver538s-omg-wrong-bra-vs-ger-prediction-9d47fa0611e https://medium.com/message/learning-from-natesilver538s-omg-...
- eerpini 12y agoThat last link on the shortcomings of most predictions based on statistical analysis was a great read. Thanks for sharing.
- CMCDragonkai 12y agoAre humans deterministic machines, or do they impose their own freewill on to the environment? Predictions based on statistical analysis probably can't account for freewill.
- Dylan16807 12y agoStatistics can account for free will just as well as they account for other complex factors, which is poorly, with no ability to say what will happen in any particular case. There's no need to get metaphysical.
- thrush 12y agoI'm excited to know which diets, exercises and lifestyle define a healthy human, which I'm hoping this information will give me (assuming the information will be released).
- psbp 12y ago"I'm excited to know which diets, exercises and lifestyle define a healthy human" The thrust of this approach (as mentioned in the article) is that they're searching for the magic of optimal biomolecular processes, not necessarily a universal regimen.
- thrush 12y agoThat's exactly what I'm hoping to find out. Optimal (and achievable) biomolecular processes should be the empirical drive behind any regimen.
- bitL 12y agoWhat if there is no such universal thing? What if our DNAs, tRNAs, upbringing etc. generate a very wide set of health requirements that aren't in sync between all humans but instead compete with each other? Some people eat bacon and trans fat every day and live up to 100 years. Some people die in their 30s on the same diet etc. Are we going to end up with an average that doesn't fit anyone?
- throwaway2048 12y agoA sort of gmail interface redesign problem, but people's lives are on the line. Google has shown itself to be driven by metrics to almost the sole exclusion of anything else, metrics often dont tell you what you think they do.
- Toenex 12y agoI work in medical imaging and if there is something I've learnt over the last 20 years it's that we understand 'normal' less than any other disease state.
- timothya 12y agoThis reminds me of something Larry Page said at TED this year: I say, wouldn't it be amazing if everyone's medical records were available anonymously to research doctors? And when someone accesses your medical record, a research doctor, they could see, you could see which doctor accessed it and why, and you could maybe learn about what conditions you have. I think if we just did that, we'd save 100,000 lives this year. So I guess I'm just very worried that with Internet privacy, we're doing the same thing we're doing with medical records, is we're throwing out the baby with the bathwater, and we're not really thinking about the tremendous good that can come from people sharing information with the right people in the right ways. Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mArrNRWQEso&t=839 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mArrNRWQEso&t=839 at 14:00.
- deleted 12y ago[deleted]
- angersock 12y agoYeah, 'cause Google and Facebook, with all of their extensive online surveillance and profiling, have done such a bangup job giving me ads I care about. Fuck that. EDIT: Seriously, if the yardstick is "but but but think of all the great things we could do, just like we have with the internet" I'm going to request proof that we've in fact accomplished that tremendous good in terms of advertising and whatnot. If they can't even show that for their main line of business, any claims about medicine seem shaky, no?
- jacquesm 12y agoI agree with Larry, at the same time google is one of the last companies on the planet that I would trust with that data. Much of this internet privacy backlash is aimed specifically at Google and Facebook (and of course the NSA, but let's assume that they don't have any problems getting to your medical data anyway).
- jkn 12y agoWhy is that? The data are anonymized. But then even if they weren't anonymized, I think Google would be one of the company I would trust the most for that. They know what they're doing in terms of security and of all the companies that know a lot about me, they're the one who consistently delivered great value from the data they have. I'm thinking of things like search, Google Now and the maps interface for my location history. Plus I'm happy that the monetization of my data serves to fund great projects like this one. It didn't have to be so...
- ejain 12y agoThe limiting factor right now isn't the lack of clever algorithms or computational power, but the lack of data that covers enough people over enough time with enough depth and quality. Also, more of former can't make up for a lack of the latter, even if it's sexier, especially for a company like Google. They should consider partnering with these guys: http://www.nature.com/news/medicine-gets-up-close-and-personal-1.14702.. http://www.nature.com/news/medicine-gets-up-close-and-person....
- paletoy 12y agoAn alternative limiting factor could be the lack of great, low cost ,measurement tools. But there are some signs we're getting there, like this[1] chip based platform that can test for 170,000 proteins on a single test, cheaply. Maybe the thing behind this google move is an understanding that it's possible, in some time feasible for google's projects, to commercialize such testing platforms, and they want in at the opportunities that will result ? [1]http://www.laserfocusworld.com/articles/2014/03/led-based-lab-on-a-chip-device-screens-for-170-000-molecules-in-blood.html http://www.laserfocusworld.com/articles/2014/03/led-based-la...
- suprgeek 12y agoThis is very exciting at one level. We need a project like this to accomplish a "Species" level map of our biology. Knowing a little bit about how data moves thru the Labs & clinics systems however, and the widespread tentacles of bad actors like the NSA, this could be too juicy a prize to ignore. What is to prevent the Feds (for instance) from knocking on their doors with an NSL for the data based on some trumped up link?
- skywhopper 12y agoThere are a few flaws in the thinking here: One, that we can define a "healthy human" or that any humans can be found that are operating at full health. Two, that there is a single set of traits that defines a healthy human, or that it could be distilled via sampling and synthesizing data about many humans. Three, that any such indicators or traits they discover will not change over time. There is undoubtedly the need for tremendous amounts of research into human physiology and health, but there's a very naive hubris that runs through all these grand analysis projects that promise to solve all human health woes. Our bodies are the most complex systems that we know of in the entire universe. The idea that we are anywhere close to understanding how they should optimally work is just completely daft. Just look back at the promises made by the Human Genome Project in the early 90s. Yes, we've learned a lot since then, but mostly we've learned that the relationship between our bodies and our genes is far far more complicated than we imagined 25 years ago.