2021 TDDW
Symposium (XIII) THINKING THE “NEW NORMAL” OF GASTROENTEROLOGY PRACTICE AFTER COVID PANDEMIC
APPLYING BIG DATA FOR GI PRACTICE – WHAT WE HAVE LEARNED FROM COVID-19 PANDEMIC? Ming-Shiang Wu Department of Internal Medicine, College of Medicine, National Taiwan University, Taipei, Taiwan Superintendent, National Taiwan University Hospital, Taipei, Taiwan President, the Gastroenterological Society of Taiwan Secretary General, Taiwan Society of Internal Medicine The outbreak of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is a serious health crisis and has a great impact on healthcare system. The rapid spread of this pandemic has led to a scarcity of equipments, consumables and staffs for hospitals. They are requested to provide timely and high-quality patient care while simultaneously protecting the staffs who are at risk for contracting this contiguous disease. Just as the saying goes” every crisis has an opportunity “, the COVID-19 also provides an unprecedented opportunity for digital transformation of healthcare systems and progress of telemedicine. Application of communication and information technologies such as smartphones, internet of things and 4G/5G transmission technology enables direct interactions among healthcare workers or patients across distance, minimizing the risk of SARSCoV-2 infection and improving access to patient
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care. Implementing telemedicine platform thus could provide healthcare services without barriers of time and space and is ideal for addressing challenges poised by the global infectious disease. In addition, patient-generated health data including physical activity level, heart rate and blood pressure, can be combined with data from social networks to depict a more complete view of person’s lifestyle and health behavior. Together with advance of genomic medicine and artificial intelligence, we are for the first-time to collect, analyze and store the high volume, high velocity and high variety health data (Big Data). Big data may improve precision in study of pathogenesis, treatment intervention, risk prediction/prevention and surveillance. Collectively, digital health, data science and precision medicine are converging in health care and will result in a paradigm shift of GI practice as well as medicine.
