Graph Databases Find Answers For The Sick And Their Healers

The Neo4j graph database is proving to be popular in the medical community for connecting different entities

A novel form of database that focuses on connections between entities, called a graph database, is finding a home in the health care industry.

"In health care, it turns out, there are quite a number of problems that involve understanding the connections between things," said Philip Rathle, vice president of products at Neo Technologies, which sells support subscriptions to its open source Neo4j graph database.

Diseases may have multiple symptoms. Doctors may belong to multiple health care networks. There are also relationships between different types of organizations, such as insurance companies and hospitals. In the realm of bioinformatics, multiple connections exist among genes and proteins...