Name: Using ‘Smart Data’ to Treat Cancer
Uploaded: 2015-12-10
Duration: 3 min 42 s
Description: Author and famed oncologist David Agus discusses saving lives through data crunching.

I'm here with David Agus who is not only a practicing oncologist but also a well known Cancer Researcher. The author of the brand new book of The Lucky Years and it's about the Brave New World of Healthcare. It is revolutionary, I mean I think this is the first time that I've seen someone really lay out the challenges and the benefits in a Truly personalized medical world. We're in a new society now it's amazing you know to curve a progress versus time all of a sudden went like this and new things are happening every week. And so much of this new technology you speak about is actually just data right? I mean it's just we're learning to use that data better, we are learning to structure it in a different way or learn more from it or aggregate it. But tell me what you mean by smarter data. When you search on Google, your search today is better than your search yesterday. Google looked at where you went, and it actually iterated or approve their search. When I see a patient today, it's the same as it was a decade ago. And I don't take those kernels of knowledge and actually use them to improve. But all of a sudden, things are changing. We all are starting to have electronic medical records. We have the ability through these large data sets of looking for trends and associations we would've missed. And the data has context. And from it we can start to learn. And you say you don't hear resistance from your patients about putting their personal data? Aren't they afraid that. Their employers might, or future employers, might discriminate against them, or insurance companies. Well, it's a great question. And President Bush enacted was called GNIA, the genetic nondiscrimination act. So it makes it illegal to actually discriminate based on an existing or genetic condition. I tell a patient, I look at them in the eye, and say, do you wanna be part of the cure? Or do you want to be part of the problem. Nobody has ever said, don't share my data. We have to all do it, and band together to create a movement of change. Now, you're the first doctor I've met that who actually wants more data. [ LAUGH ] You know, so many doctors are swimming in data and saying, I don't have time to input all of this let alone make sense of it all. So tell me why you think that being inundated with data is gonna change things for the better. Doctors, you're right, don't want data. Doctors want knowledge. And so that's why there are starting to be many new companies that are taking data and creating knowledge. So when you're a physician and you enter something about a patient Something you'll go back and say listen these three labs change in these two directions and therefore you should look and ask the patient that question related to colon cancer. And so I think with that knowledge we can bring in a new understanding and actually improve the care we give to patients. And you're seeing this on a day to day basis with the patients you treat? Patients of mine when they come in now if they have cancer can sequence any gene in the cancer. And I could potentially target some of them and design personalized therapies. One example is there's cancer cells when they evolve they have a don't eat me signal on their surface. And there are now drugs that are FDA approved on the market that block that don't eat me signal to allow the immune system to attack it. These drugs have side effects. And we now have certain molecular tests that can say who will, or is more likely, to respond and who isn't. And I've seen it work. I had a patient just a few months ago who had a cancer, metastatic to the brain. And I put him on one of these drugs. And all of a sudden, he actually went blind. Cuz the cancer got bigger. But two weeks later, the sight came back. And his disease shrunk pretty dramatically. And now he's living with the state of disease that isn't growing anymore. Did I buy him time? No question about it. Is it one month, six months a year? I don't know yet. The hope is this is the beginning of something different and we can actually buy years. [ BLANK_AUDIO ]

Author and famed oncologist David Agus discusses saving lives through data crunching.