OVERVIEW
This is the second workshop set up for the purpose of mapping a comprehensive
big data for health strategy at the University of Toronto. The first (Summer)
Workshop on Big
Data for Health was held in the Fields Institute in July 3rd and 4th 2014.
The aims of the workshop are to bring together scientists in the disciplines
involved in generating and analyzing the diverse range of data that are increasingly
being used to underpin developments in health policy. In our first workshop
at the Fields Institute we brought together scientists working in the laboratory
disciplines with those working in population health. In the Fall workshop
we intend to bring together a diverse group of scientists and statisticians
working with health services, GIS, public health, economic, social services,
justice, corrections and education data. We will also invite those involved
in the analyses of restricted data with special governance arrangements, specifically
immigration and First Nations and Metis data.
AGENDA
November 5th (evening only) and November 6th.
Our featured speakers for the evening session November 5th are:
- Bob Bell, MD MSc, Deputy Minister of Health and Long-Term Care for Ontario
- Leslie Roos, PhD, Professor Emeritus, University of Manitoba and Co-founder
of Manitoba Centre for Health Policy
- David Mowat, MBChB MPH, Acting Chief Medical Officer of Health for Ontario
- Mary R. L'Abbé, PhD, Earle W. McHenry Professor and Chair of Nutritional
Sciences
- Zhengming Chen, MBBS DPhil, Co-director of China Kadoorie Biobank (CKB),
Professor of Epidemiology, University of Oxford
The goal of these featured presentations will be to provide a broad view
of the significance of Big Data for health policies, as well as setting the
scene for the following day about the potential for research with linked data-sets.
We encourage you to prepare a short presentation on a relevant topic (see
Workshop Background below). We are not trying to be prescriptive – this
need not involve linkage to population data – other collaborations are
possible. And we would like to cast the net wide to include all social, education,
biomedical data, environmental and population data and the strategies used
in their analysis and dissemination. Topics can include public health, health
care, health human resources, social and education policy, environment, medicines
and food and their relevance to health.
At this stage, we invite you to propose a title of a presentation and a presenter
for November 6th that fits with this broad agenda.
The purpose is to communicate with potential collaborators outside your field,
not to ‘showcase’ your research. It should be brief (5 minutes)
with a maximum of 3 slides. We will have 5 minutes for discussion. We hope
these presentations encourage collaboration outside your field and in the
policy arena; therefore, we ask that you keep in mind both the potential for
sharing data and collaborating. After the presentations, we will to summarise
what has been presented and make recommendations based on the day. We are
asking for you to consider attending /or presenting on November 6th. We encourage
you to be bold – if in doubt submit a title.
Casual dining and a cash bar will be provided the evening of November 5th,
as well as light breakfast and lunch on November 6th.
Background to the Workshop
Health is much more than the absence of measurable disease. And health policy
is much more than planning the delivery of healthcare. We know that the future
health of Ontarians will be determined by a range of factors –social,
economic, environmental and behavioral. The policies that shape these factors
reach beyond the hospital and clinic and include education, nutrition, city
planning, transport, recreation, environment social services and the economy,
among others. A common thread that runs through these inter-connected themes
is the need for reliable data to inform policy decisions, which are increasingly
required to be justified by evidence and empirical data. This goes far beyond
traditional health services and disease surveillance data to include all of
domains that go on to affect health, directly or indirectly. Furthermore,
data must be linkable – at the level of the individual or at a meaningful
geographic or organizational level – so that the relationship on health
and other outcomes can be empirically measured. This allows us to apply emerging
methods to go above and beyond associations and to study causal mechanisms.
Ontario is fortunate to have access to a wide and growing range of data-sets
that are relevant and are becoming more accessible. Ontario is also home to
many analytical and computing experts, who are contributing to the growing
field of data science. Despite the opportunities, many challenges remain.
For example, accessibility of the data is difficult for many researchers or
policymakers and many are not aware of the range of data available. Other
challenges relate to the awareness and knowledge of new and complex techniques
that are used to analyze these large data files. Finally, the wide diversity
of data needed to inform the broad aspects of health from social, to environmental,
to medical, requires multidisciplinary expertise to both understand the components
of the data and use the data in its appropriate context. The purpose of the
second in our series of research workshops in ‘big data for health’
at the University of Toronto brings together data holders researchers analysts
and policy makers to learn more about what is currently possible and what
might be achievable in the future. We hope this workshop will create new knowledge,
and build new collaborations between researchers, analysts and decision-makers.
Program November 5
5:45 – 6:00 pm
WELCOMING REMARKS
David Henry and Laura Rosella, Dalla Lana School of Public Health, University
of Toronto
6:00 – 7:45 pm
KEYNOTE SPEAKERS
Big health data shaping the future delivery and evaluation of healthcare
in Ontario
Bob Bell, Deputy Minister, Ministry of Health and Long-Term Care
Twenty-five years of linking health and social data at the MCHP
Leslie Roos, Professor Emeritus, University of Manitoba and Co-founder of
Manitoba Centre for Health Policy (Slides)
The use and application of data in public health decision-making
David Mowat, Interim Chief Medical Officer of Health for Ontario (Slides)
The role of big data to inform food policy in Canada
Mary R. L’Abbé, Earle W. McHenry Professor and Chair of the Dept.
of Nutritional Sciences (Slides)
Linking electronic medical records to the China Kadoorie Biobank
Zhengming Chen, Co-director of China KadoorieBiobank (CKB) and Professor of
University of Oxford (Slides)
Program November 6, 2014
8:30 – 8:45 am
WELCOME & OPENING REMARKS
David Henry, Dalla Lana School of Public Health & Institute for Health
Policy, Management and Evaluation (IHMPE)
Laura Rosella, Dalla Lana School of Public Health
8:45 – 10:15 am
SESSION 1 – BIG DATA HIGHLIGHTS
Advances in big data and dementia
Geoff Anderson, IHPME
The health policy newbie: Implications from social media
Rumi Chanara, Boston’s Children’s Hospital & Harvard Medical
School
Distributed networks, the example of mini-sentinel
Dennis Ross-Degnan, Harvard Medical School & Harvard Pilgrim Health Care
Institute
Using the primary care electronic medical record to identify complex patients
David Frost, University Health Network
10:30 – 11:40 pm SESSION 2 – CHILD HEALTH & SOCIAL DATA
Welcome back and remarks
Laura Rosella, Dalla Lana School of Public Health
Big data for health Policy in early childhood: the TARGet Kids! network
Cory Borkhoff, The Hospital for Sick Children & IHPME (Slides)
Linking data on pregnancy and child health to enable studies of the first
1000 days in Ontario
Laura Anderson, The Hospital for Sick Children & St. Michael’s Hospital
(Slides)
The use of electronic medical records (EMR) to measure childhood obesity
outcomes in community-based primary health care
Sarah Carsley, IHPME (Slides)
Linking social and education data to health data
Karey Iron, Institute for Clinical Evaluative Sciences (Slides)
Indigenous health data linkage and governance
Saba Khan, Institute for Clinical Evaluative Sciences (Slides)
Building public trust in big data analytics for health policy
Don Willison, Dalla Lana School of Public Health & IHPME (Slides)
1:00 – 2:10 pm SESSION 3 – HEALTH CARE
Welcome back and remarks
David Henry, Dalla Lana School of Public Health & IHPME
Big data from primary care
Frank Sullivan, North York General Hospital & University of Toronto Practice-Based
Research Network (UTOPIAN) (Slides)
Harnessing big data to develop better health care payment models
Erik Hellsten, Health Quality Ontario
Machine learning
Ayse Bener, Ryerson University
Federated data and distributed networks
David Henry, Dalla Lana School of Public Health & IHPME
Biobanking and data federation linking clinical data with biospecimen
data to facilitate research
Terry Michaelson, BioBanking System, University Health Network (Slides)
2:30 – 3:40 pm SESSION 4 – PUBLIC HEALTH
Welcome back and remarks
Laura Rosella, Dalla Lana School of Public Health
A Caution on "Big" data and prediction in epidemiology and public
health decision-making
Ayaz Hyder, Dalla Lana School of Public Health (Slides)
Linking population-based data to study effects of the built environment
on health
Gillian Booth, Centre for Research on Inner City Health, St. Michael’s
Hospital (Slides)
Assessing the health impact of extreme weather events using administrative
data
Yasmin Khan, Public Health Ontario (Slides)
The long-term impact of infectious diseases
Beate Sander, Public Health Ontario
Social service chain modelling and evaluation
Bart Gajderowicz, Mechanical and Industrial Engineering, University of Toronto
(Slides)
3:40 – 4:00 pm
Closing Remarks and Reflections
Adalsteinn Brown, IHPME & Dalla Lana School of Public Health
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