Why the Internet is (sometimes) better than the real-world for medical research

As people spend ever more time online, they produce content from which medical information can be gleaned. Such content can be used to generate new medical knowledge, and I will share examples from public health, post-marketing drug safety, and others.

In some respects, this new source of information is superior to traditional medical information collection tools, enabling an unbiased understanding derived from large cohorts of people during normal times as well as in times of medical emergencies. Moreover, this data could provide unprecedented insights into how behavioral, environmental, and social traits influence people’s medical conditions.

Presenter(s)

Elad Yom-Tov is a Senior Research Scientist at Yahoo Research's lab in New York. Before joining Yahoo, he was with IBM Research, where he held the title of Master Inventor, and Rafael. His primary research interests are in large-scale Machine Learning, Information Retrieval, and Social Analysis.

Dr. Yom-Tov studied at Tel-Aviv University and the Technion in Israel. He has published 2 books, 60+ papers (including 3 award-winning ones), and has 30 filed with 11 issued patents. The results of his research have flown at four times the speed of sound, enabled people to communicate with computers using only their brain-waves, and analyzed cellphone records of a significant portion of the worlds’ population.