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"Learning health systems need to bridge the "two cultures" of clinical informatics and data science"
United Kingdom (U.K.) health research policy and plans for population health management are predicated upon transformative knowledge discovery from operational "big data." Learning health systems require not only data but also feedback loops of knowledge into changed practice. This depends on knowledge management and application, which in turn depends upon effective system design and implementation. Biomedical informatics is the interdisciplinary field at the intersection of health science, social science, and information science and technology that spans this entire scope.
In the U.K., the separate worlds of health data science (bioinformatics, big data) and effective healthcare system design and implementation (clinical informatics, "digital health") have operated as "two cultures." Much National Health Service and social care data is of very poor quality. Substantial research funding is wasted on data cleansing or by producing very weak evidence. There is not yet a sufficiently powerful professional community or evidence base of best practice to influence the practitioner community or the digital health industry. (Full article...)
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