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Data Mining Competition To Improve Drug Safety
An anonymous reader writes "The OMOP Cup is a competition to find new methods for detecting drug side effects. There have been several cases over the last few years where drugs have had issues that haven't been detected for years after they were released. The proliferation of electronic medical records and pharmacy claims provides a large and potentially powerful new data source for faster detection. The problem is that the techniques for doing this on a large scale are immature. The OMOP Cup is trying to help fix that. They've already given out $5,000 for top methods, and there's $15,000 still up for grabs."
The side effects of drugs is that a bunch of prudes who want an excuse to run your life for you want to make all of the good ones illegal. For your protection, of course.
I'm curious as to what proportion of medical records were incorrect and what proportion of pharmacy claims were inaccurate. Just how useful could a database like this be, if its source data is prone to some really wacky error? Side effect misdiagnoses alone could make for a considerable slog through noise just to pick up an effect.
"What's the use in being grown up if you can't be childish sometimes?" --Fourth Doctor, "Robot"
You parse 16 gigs, and what do you get?...
I've lost all my marbles except one & It's fun to test angular & centripetal acceleration in my skull
Justice task force recommends about 50 Guantanamo detainees be held indefinitely
A Justice Department-led task force has concluded that nearly 50 of the 196 detainees at the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, should be held indefinitely without trial under the laws of war...
God DAMN that EVIL George W. Booosh!!!!
Not very much money when you consider the amount of money that gets paid out to plaintiffs in lawsuits filed over drug side effects, such as the ones concerning Vioxx. This whole thing sounds a lot like the pharmaceutical companies are looking for a cheap fix, an alternative to the extensive drug trials they ought to be doing.
This ain't rocket surgery.
Dig through a huge dataset like this looking for problems and you will find them. For everything. And with the FDA and court's approach, that means that even tiny effects will end up getting drugs knocked off the market. The COX-2 inhibitors are a perfect example. Sure, for a tiny number of people taking them they increased the risk of heart attack. But for untold numbers of people taking them, they relieved pain either where nothing else would, or with far fewer side effects than other pain medications like opoids. But in today's society, we're not allowed to trade a tiny risk of death versus an enormous chance of pain relief. So even the very tiny risks one can find this way will end up getting whole classes of non-lifesaving drugs off the market. No more analgesics, no more antihistamines, no more decongestants (oh, wait, they already virtually banned those for the War on Drugs), no more cough medicines, etc.
competition to experiment with drugs on facebook and twitter mines you!
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
This strikes me as a huuuuuge breach of medical record confidentiality. Where exactly do they plan to legally get enough medical records to mine in the first place?
to accept the praise of personal wisdom is an affront to the very ideal i hold dear.
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All your code are belong to us !
This is already being done, the pharmacovigilance field is growing rapidly, Oracle just began a life sciences company that focuses on this field.
Datamining by Kaiser Permanente helped find a previously unknown risk of heart attack for certain users of VIOXX, and it was probably right that the drug was withdrawn. It may also be a good idea to re-approve it for those who would benefit with minimal risk. But without the post-approval datamining we would never know what the risk/benefit truly was.
That also points to some limitations of our drug approval process. Trial patients are followed only for so long. In fact, some of the trial patients who were taking it long term had heart attacks, but that data was not included because they occurred past the end of the required study period.
If you believe in the science that brings you modern medicine to begin with, then more knowledge is always better.
I could focus on reducing mortality due to prescription drug side-effects and maybe get $5k? That's awesome, I can totally help out my fellow ... what's that? I get $1M if I rock NetFlix's movie rating DB? Movie ratings here I come!
They've already given out $5,000 for top methods, and there's $15,000 still up for grabs.
Whoa there, big spender! I'm all for serving the public good, but if I was to work all those extra hours and discovered a useful new technique for using this data, and I have to choose between maybe getting somewhat less than what I still owe on my car, or trying to sell the code to the deep pockets of Big Pharma, I know which one I'm going to go with.
Proud member of the Weirdo-American community.
The base assumption of this seems to be, that the point of a pharma company is to heal people with safe drugs.
It’s not. In fact, if they don’t lose money from it, it is completely irrelevant if you die a slow and horrible death.
Proven by many, many products that are out there right now. Like Prozac. It does help nobody. In fact it does the exact opposite, because it drives people even further into repression. And therefore dependency on the stuff.
The point of pharma companies, is to make money.
As long as that is not 100% and without any loopholes, tied to what we want from them,
we will have no guarantee at all to get it.
Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
...even if I win, since the prizes are so small. Kim0
TFS: "They've already given out $5,000 for top methods, and there's $15,000 still up for grabs."
Imagine, $20.000 that will help the poor Pharma-Industry to avoid being sued.
Alternatively:
Imagine, $20.000 that will save the health of numerous people.
Now, that is a big deal indeed.
CC.
TaijiQuan (Huang, 5 loosenings)
If the government collaborate with drug companies and you are legally drugged, there is hardly any hope for mankind. I do understand from a friend in the USA that some kids are legally drugged with psychiatric drugs namely Ritalin and it has gone one step further that unless you receive shots, kids are not allowed to attend school. We have so far resisted part of this in the UK, but the drug companies and government is trying to weasel they're way around it. I also have something to say about Gulf War Syndrome from OP Desert Storm and Telic which I served in. We were almost forced to take 5 injections as immunisation against chemical weapons, VX nerve agent etc. Everyone I know that took those drugs suffer from Gulf War Syndrome and there is no admission still to this day by the gov and drug companies. As S/SGT (staff sergeant) I ordered those under my command NOT to take the drugs as I had drilled my squaddies over and over to get in NBC (Nuclear Biological Chemical) suits within 45 seconds. none in my batallion were affected, apart from the depleted uranium shells. I have my moments of being hyper as hell as do the rest of my troop, but we are alive to tell the tale. Never trust governments and drug companies. Maybe if they took their own drugs they would feel better. Being compensated for your health and sanity is not worth any amount of money. Love NSN
All cows eat grass!