Talk to the Veterans Crisis Line now
U.S. flag
An official website of the United States government
Veterans Benefits and Health Care About VA Find a VA Location

VA Health Systems Research

Go to the VA ORD website
Go to the QUERI website
FORUM - Translating research into quality health care for Veterans


In This Issue

Director's Letter

Director's Letter
by David Atkins, M.D., M.P.H., Director, HSR&D

A Facebook post last year by Duke professor and behavioral economist, Daniel Ariely, Ph.D., noted, "Big data is like teenage sex: everyone talks about it, nobody really knows how to do it, everyone thinks everyone else is doing it, so everyone claims they are doing it." We have probably come some distance in the actual use of big data in health care since that time, but we still might be in the phase of the Gartner Hype Cycle where expectations exceed reality...

Commentary

Embracing "Big Data" and Data Science
by Stephan Fihn, M.D., M.P.H., VHA Office of Analytics and Business Intelligence, Washington, D.C.

The imperative for HSR&D investigators is to develop competencies in this rapidly evolving field of data science so that our health system and the Veterans we serve can benefit from knowledge that is presently sequestered ...

Response to Commentary

"Big Data" Challenges for Health Services Research
by David Atkins, M.D., M.P.H., HSR&D, Washington, D.C.

What was once the domain of research—building data sets, documenting variation in processes and outcomes, and exploring factors associated with good or bad outcomes—is now part of the core business of a learning health care system...

Research Highlights

Using Big Data Meaningfully to Improve Quality and Safety at the Point of Care
by Hardeep Singh, M.D., M.P.H., Houston VA Center for Innovation in Quality, Effectiveness and Safety, Michael E. DeBakey VA Medical Center, Houston, Texas and Dean F. Sittig, Ph.D., University of Texas School of Biomedical Informatics, Houston, Texas

The promise of big data is the ability to identify significant events and nascent risks by combining data (e.g., diagnoses, test results, and treatments) gathered through multiple sources and methods, often across disparate organizations ...


Opportunities for Big Data Research in VA
by Adi V. Gundlapalli, M.D., Ph.D., M.S., Salt Lake Informatics, Decision Enhancement, and Analytic Sciences Center (IDEAS 2.0), VA Salt Lake City Health Care System, Salt Lake City, Utah

Although big data has come to mean many things to people in different fields, the term generally refers to data sets so large and complex that processing them with conventional hardware, software, and techniques is extremely difficult or impossible...


Predictive Analytics for Population Surveillance and Personalized Medicine: The Example of Acute Kidney Injury
by Michael E. Matheny, M.D., M.S., M.P.H., Geriatric Research Education Clinical Center, VA Tennessee Valley Healthcare System, Nashville, Tennessee

Predictive analytics pose significant challenges in incorporating both structured and unstructured data and in maintaining the accuracy of models over time and across populations...



Organizational Profile

Ideas 2.0 Center: An Engine for Change
by Matt Samore, M.D., HSR&D Informatics, Decision-Enhancement, and Analytic Sciences Center, VA Salt Lake City Health Care System, Salt Lake City, Utah


From the beginning, informatics has served as the unifying theme of our Center. In Salt Lake City, interest in informatics is "infectious," meaning that, eventually, all of our investigators catch some form of the "informatics bug" ...

Questions about the HSR website? Email the Web Team

Any health information on this website is strictly for informational purposes and is not intended as medical advice. It should not be used to diagnose or treat any condition.