Cited by 67Asthma and respiratory diseasesBig Data Technologies and ApplicationsChronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD) Research

Disaggregating asthma: big investigation versus big data

Open access
Belgrave, Danielle, Henderson, John, Simpson, Angela, Buchan, Iain, Bishop, Christopher, Custovic, Adnan·2017·Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology

Abstract

We are facing a major challenge in bridging the gap between identifying subtypes of asthma to understand causal mechanisms and translating this knowledge into personalized prevention and management strategies. In recent years, "big data" has been sold as a panacea for generating hypotheses and driving new frontiers of health care; the idea that the data must and will speak for themselves is fast becoming a new dogma. One of the dangers of ready accessibility of health care data and computational tools for data analysis is that the process of data mining can become uncoupled from the scientific process of clinical interpretation, understanding the provenance of the data, and external validation. Although advances in computational methods can be valuable for using unexpected structure in data to generate hypotheses, there remains a need for testing hypotheses and interpreting results with scientific rigor. We argue for combining data- and hypothesis-driven methods in a careful synergy, and the importance of carefully characterized birth and patient cohorts with genetic, phenotypic, biological, and molecular data in this process cannot be overemphasized. The main challenge on the road ahead is to harness bigger health care data in ways that produce meaningful clinical interpretation and to translate this into better diagnoses and properly personalized prevention and treatment plans. There is a pressing need for cross-disciplinary research with an integrative approach to data science, whereby basic scientists, clinicians, data analysts, and epidemiologists work together to understand the heterogeneity of asthma.

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Crossref · 10.1016/j.jaci.2016.11.003

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  • Bayesian and frequentist approaches can be applied to both big and small data in healthcare research.

    “Bayesian and frequent approaches make us understand about the ethnology of diseases commonly used in statistical machine learning and can be applied to both big and small data in healthcare research.”
  • Different mechanisms may give rise to similar or almost identical observable traits, while the same underlying mechanism may also result in distinct phenotypes in different patients.

    “However, it is important to note that different mechanisms may give rise to similar or almost identical observable traits, while the same underlying mechanism may also result in distinct phenotypes in different patients (25).”

    From Epidemiology of Asthma in Children and Adults (2019) · cites this paper as [25]

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Research works printed but not linked: 3

  1. [53]Friedman J. Hastie T. Tibshirani R. The elements of statistical learning: Springer series in statistics 2001 Springer Berlin
  2. [63]Gilboa I. Marinacci M. Ambiguity and the Bayesian paradigm. Readings in formal epistemology 2016 Springer Berlin 385 439
  3. [64]Jordan MI. Are you a Bayesian or a frequentist? [Summer School Lecture]. Cambridge (United Kingdom); 2009. Video lecture available at http://videolectures.net/mlss09uk_jordan_bfway/.

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Authors
Belgrave, D., Henderson, J., Simpson, A., Buchan, I., Bishop, C., & Custovic, A.
Affiliations
  • Imperial College London (GB)
  • University of Bristol (GB)
  • University of Manchester (GB)
Venue
Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology
Publisher
Elsevier BV
Published
2017-02
Volume
139
Issue
2
Pages
400-407
ISSN
0091-6749 (ISSN-L)
OpenAlex
W2554463361
Cited by
67
References
86
Citations by year
2026: 2 · 2025: 4 · 2024: 1 · 2023: 3 · 2022: 3 · 2021: 8 · 2020: 10 · 2019: 19 · 2018: 16 · 2017: 1
FWCI
9.65
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
Locations
  • Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology (publishedVersion, cc-by)
  • Europe PMC (PubMed Central) (publishedVersion, cc-by)
  • PubMed Central (publishedVersion, cc-by)
  • PubMed (publishedVersion)
  • Research Explorer (The University of Manchester) (publishedVersion, cc-by)
  • Bristol Research (University of Bristol) (submittedVersion, cc-by)
  • Explore Bristol Research (submittedVersion, cc-by)
  • Spiral (Imperial College London) (submittedVersion, cc-by)
Funders
  • GlaxoSmithKline
  • Sanofi
  • Microsoft Research
  • Regeneron Pharmaceuticals
  • Medical Research Council (MR/K002449/1, M015181, MR/M015181/1, MR/K006665/1, MR/K002449/2, MC_PC_13042)
Topics
  • Health Sciences › Medicine › Physiology › Asthma and respiratory diseases
  • Social Sciences › Decision Sciences › Information Systems and Management › Big Data Technologies and Applications
  • Health Sciences › Medicine › Pulmonary and Respiratory Medicine › Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD) Research
Keywords
asthma subtypes, asthma heterogeneity, big data, data mining, hypothesis-driven research, data provenance, external validation, birth cohort data, personalized asthma management, asthma diagnosis
MeSH terms
Asthma, Electronic Data Processing, Delivery of Health Care, United Kingdom, Humans, Phenotype, Software, Computational Biology, Interdisciplinary Communication, Translational Research, Biomedical, Precision Medicine

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