Highlights –

  • The Databricks Lakehouse is a source of data management in disease prediction, medical image classification, biomarker discovery, and precision medicine.
  • The platform brings custom-tailored data and AI solutions to handle and address common challenges.

Databricks, the data and AI company and pioneer of the Data Lakehouse paradigm, launched the industry’s first Lakehouse platform for organizations across life sciences and healthcare industries. The Databricks Lakehouse for healthcare and life sciences will omit the need for legacy data architectures that have historically brought innovation in patient care and drug discovery by creating data silos and making advanced analytics challenging. A single platform for data management, analytics and advanced AI use cases can perform multiple functions like disease prediction, medical image classification, biomarker discovery and deliver the promise of precision medicine. Already some enterprises have shown interest in this Lakehouse platform, including GE Healthcare, Thermofisher, Walgreens, Regeneron, and partners like John Snow Labs, Lovelytics, and ZS Associates.

Databricks is already helping a new breed of AI and data innovators in healthcare improve people’s lives with behavioral conditions. For instance, Cognoa, specializing in pediatric behavioral health, uses AI to develop new diagnostic and therapeutic products. CareDx is a precision medicine company that uses data to further the discovery and development of differentiated genomics-based solutions for transplant patients. In other cases, with the help of technology, scientists can detect the presence of cancer tumour DNA in blood long before traditional detection methods and give early screening during annual physicals from a single blood draw.

Databricks’ Lakehouse for life sciences and healthcare addresses the industry’s everyday challenges. It offers tailored data and AI solutions. Organizations can jumpstart the analytics projects and save weeks and months with the help of analytics accelerators and open-source libraries – like Glow for genomics – along with a certified ecosystem of partners.

The solutions by Databricks include –

  • Disease risk prediction – Uses Machine Learning (ML) to assess the patient’s risk for a particular condition as per medical history and demographics information.
  • Digital pathology classification – Rapidly analyzes slide images with deep learning to automate the detection of metastasis.
  • NLP with John Snow Labs – Helps analyze unstructured medical text using NLP for use cases such as oncology research, drug safety monitoring and anonymizing PHI.
  • Interoperability with Lovelytics – Automating the ingestion of FHIR bundles into the lakehouse for downstream patient analytics at scale.
  • Biomedical research with ZS associates – It is about improving the ingestion of streaming FHIR bundles into the lakehouse for downstream patient analytics at scale.

Experts’ view

“One of the biggest challenges facing healthcare organizations today is building a comprehensive view of the patient. The Databricks Lakehouse for Healthcare and Life Sciences is helping GE Healthcare with a modern, open and collaborative platform to build patient views across care pathways. By unifying our data in a single platform with a full suite of analytics and ML capabilities, we’ve diminished costly legacy data silos and equipped our teams with timely and accurate insights.” Joji George, Chief Technology Officer, LCS Digital, GE Healthcare

“We recognize the important role that data plays in getting our products into the hands of those that need them the most, and the Databricks Lakehouse for Healthcare and Life Sciences solution helps us achieve that goal. This modern platform for data and AI has enabled us to eliminate costly data silos, unlock new opportunities to innovate, and become a more data-driven organization.” Feng Liang, Sr. IT Director, Thermo Fisher Scientific

“With the Lakehouse for Healthcare and Sciences, we can help accelerate the development of novel therapeutics and fundamentally change the way care is delivered by going from measuring disease to predicting it,” said Michael Sanky, Global Industry Lead for Healthcare and Life Sciences at Databricks.

Michael Hartman, SVP of Regulated Industries at Databricks added, “The opportunity for healthcare to be transformed with data and AI cannot be overstated. As organizations fully transition to electronic medical records, new data types like genomics evolve, and IoT and wearables take off, the industry is awash in massive amounts of data. But this data is siloed, and teams don’t have the tools to properly use it. With Lakehouse for Healthcare and Life Sciences, we can drive transformation across the entire healthcare ecosystem and help empower our customers to solve specific industry challenges and, ultimately, drive better outcomes for the future of healthcare.”