In 2013 we held around table event, resulting in a report: Public health and big data report
The three main themes identified were:
- Data collection around health behaviours;
- Additional methodology training for graduate students/early career researchers;
- Opportunities for networking through PublicHealth@Cambridge to aid methodological development to solve data challenges in public health research.
Big data and public health overlap in many different applications, examples being:
- analysis of epidemiological data
- interrogation of patient data
- language processing in screening articles for systematic reviews
The expertise and methods used in both can be combined to mutual advantage.
Leads: Dr Nigel Collier (Department of Theoretical and Applied Linguistics (DTAL), European Bioinformatics Institute (EMBL-EBI)) and Professor Sylvia Richardson (MRC Biostatistics unit)