- California: Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg and his wife, physician Priscilla Chan, have given $10 million to the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) to support big data projects. The money will help fund new faculty hires at the Institute for Computational Health Sciences (IHCS) and help build a digital network that brings together health data multiple sources to identify patterns, including an initiative to integrate EHR data from five UC medical centers on about 15 million patients. In addition, Atul Butte, a pediatrician and computer science leader who heads IHCS, has been named the Priscilla Chan and Mark Zuckerberg Distinguished Professor at UCSF (Monegain, HealthcareIT News, 7/31; Arndt, Modern Healthcare, 7/31; Sweeney, FierceHealthcare, 7/31; UCSF release, 7/28).
- Illinois: Memorial Medical Center in Springfield in early June began offering a 24 hour delay on first baths for newborns, instead of bathing them within the first hours of life. The World Health Organization recommends the practice, which they say preserves the creamy substance that covers most newborns, allowing them to conserve energy and avoid low blood sugar. Hospital officials said the change could help reduce medical intervention and lead to fewer days in the hospital for newborns, reducing costs overall (AP/Sacramento Bee, 7/31).
- Indiana: Riley Children's Health has named Elaine Cox CMO and Paul Haut COO. Cox most recently worked as medical director of infection prevention. Haut previously served as CMO at Riley and held the post of interim president from April 2015 to April 2016 (Vartorellla, Becker's Hospital Review, 7/31).
Big data: It seems impossible to avoid, but is it right for you?
Big data technologies bring new capabilities and IT economics to the problems of acquiring, storing, analyzing, and acting on data of unprecedented volume and variety. But is it right for you?
In our primer, we examine what big data is, the problems big data technologies attempt to solve, and the vendor landscape. We also provide guidance on when and if it makes sense to deploy big data approaches in health care settings.