9 Healthcare Innovations Driven By Open Data

Three years ago, Jeopardy fans got to see Watson, IBM's supercomputer, beat two human Jeopardy champions to take a $1 million prize. Watson's skill at the game derived not just from its computing power but from its ability to process huge amounts of data rapidly. The next year, IBM and the Cleveland Clinic announced that Watson was turning to more serious pursuits and had "enrolled" in medical school. It's been a productive partnership: Last month, they launched a new Watson program using genomic data to find the best options for cancer patients.

Watson's venture into healthcare is part of a new movement to data-driven medicine. The federal government has recently released large amounts of data from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services and the Food and Drug Administration, among other agencies. At the same time, several other trends -- the use of electronic medical records, an explosion of data about the human genome, and advances in data analysis -- have given us the potential for a revolution in healthcare.

We can look forward to more data-driven diagnostics, treatment plans, and predictive analytics to determine the best treatments more scientifically. Many experts now think we're on the verge of a new era of personalized medicine, where an individual's data -- ranging from genetic makeup to exercise habits -- can be used with the right algorithms to help determine a strategy for care...