Using hHadoop excel, ImmuNet has compiled more than 38,000 published pieces of medical research to help doctors predict immune pathways, disease-associated genes, and immunological pathways. Thanks to low-cost, powerful computers, scientists at the Icahn School of Medicine and Princeton University have benefited from big data techniques to apply sophisticated algorithms and statistical modeling tools to make ImmuNet able to recognize and predict patterns. Researchers hope to further test the software’s predictions with further experiments to help quantify and better understand the ways that genes and proteins interact with immunological diseases. “This powerful new tool will help doctors make breakthrough discoveries by applying big data statistical techniques to the world’s biomedical research output. This will help us understand immunological diseases and mechanisms much better,” said Stuart Sealfon, MD, Chairman Glickenhaus Professor of the Department of Neurology at Mountain Sinai Health System, a co-senior author of the recent publication. “The end goal of ImmuNet is to rapidly accelerate our understanding of exactly what roles that genes and immune pathways play, which should lead to breakthroughs in new treatments for human diseases of the immune system.” ImmuNet was developed by research scientists with special training in applying Bayesian statistical data integration modeling techniques, in effect “teaching” the computer to understand and interpret vast volumes of public medical research data. Bayesian analysis is used by many companies and organizations to pull out valuable data from a sea of information, effectively able to separate the wheat from the chaff. ImmuNet’s advanced algorithms are able to rapidly identify and use relevant information about immunological pathways while ignoring any data sets that have irrelevant information. The researchers’ target in developing ImmuNet was to advance our understanding of exactly how the human immune system functions, the complex network of cells, hormones, and organs that work together to protect the body against infectious agents, hostile microscopic invaders and cancer. While scientists already understand how the immune system works to stave off outside attackers, there is still much to be learned about why the immune system sometimes turns on itself, attacking the body’s own cells, which leads to inflammation and other serious illnesses. “Our hope is to use ImmuNet for a wide range of different immunology disciplines, and we expect that these insights will continue to grow as we keep feeding the machine ever more amounts of publicly-available big data,” said Olga Troyanskaya, PhD, Professor, Department of Computer Science and Lewis-Sigler Institute of Integrative Genomics, Princeton University and Deputy Director of Genomics, Simons Center for Data Analysis, co-senior author of the publication. None of this would have been possible without the new advances in big data. Many people would think that big data is just for the business or marketing world but they would be wrong. Now is actually one of the greatest times to be in medicine or researching in medicine because of big data. With the algorithms set in place to pull research and data into ImmuNet, scientists and doctors are given access to a wide range and extensive database of research and information. With this information, they will be able to revolutionize the healthcare system, allowing online insurance quotes to be more accurate, and dig deeper into their work to make discoveries that wouldn’t have been accessible without the help of big data. Jeremy Sutter is a technology and business writer from Simi Valley, California. With a journalism degree from UC Irvine and a flair for mobile app creation, he lives for success stories and hopes to be one someday. ©2015 by Rowan Consulting Associates, Inc., Colorado Springs, CO. All rights reserved. This article originally appeared in Tim Rowan’s Home Care Technology Report. homecaretechreport.com One copy may be printed for personal use; further reproduction by permission only. editor@homecaretechreport.com |
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By Wendell Potter, senior analyst at the Center for Public Integrity
The CEOs of Aetna and Anthem, the two big insurers that have offered to pay more than $90 billion to buy two competitors, Humana and Cigna, will testify before a Senate panel Tuesday, in an effort to persuade lawmakers that the deals will be good for consumers. Physician and hospital trade groups and health care advocates are among those that disagree.
Appearing before a Senate Judiciary committee that oversees antitrust issues will be Aetna CEO Mark Bertolini and Anthem CEO Joseph Swedish. The two men undoubtedly will try to make the case that, even though Aetna and Anthem would increase their presence in many markets across the country if regulators approve the acquisitions, there will be little need to sell any of their health plans to pass regulatory muster.
During a House Judiciary subcommittee hearing earlier this month, the American Medical Association said the two mergers would exceed antitrust guidelines in 97 metropolitan areas in 17 states and create a much less competitive marketplace in lots of other markets. Executives of the firms involved in the proposed deals have insisted that consumers will benefit in the form of lower premiums, despite historical evidence that insurance industry mergers have actually resulted in just the opposite: higher premiums. While it’s true the companies that emerged from previous acquisitions were able to force doctors and hospitals to accept lower reimbursement, the insurers pocketed the savings instead of passing them along to their customers.
The AMA’s concern, of course, is that the same thing will happen if the Justice Department approves the Aetna-Humana and Anthem-Cigna deals and the health insurance marketplace becomes even more dominated by big for-profit insurers. [Potter provides more details about these large, for-profit healthcare insurers’ involvement with federal government players in extensive lobbying and spending efforts to further their industries’ stature.]
At the Sept. 10 House hearing, the AMA reminded lawmakers of a Justice Department guideline that a merger enhances corporate leverage “if it is likely to encourage one or more firms to raise price, reduce output, diminish innovation, or otherwise harm customers as a result of diminished competitive constraints or incentives.”
We can expect the Aetna and Anthem CEOs to dispute the AMA’s contentions, and we probably can expect the members of the Senate Subcommittee on Antitrust, Competition Policy and Consumer Rights to ask mostly softball questions. That’s because the companies’ political action committees have been generous to several members of the subcommittee. According to the Center for Responsive Politics, the companies’ PACs have contributed several thousand dollars to the campaigns of all five Republicans on the subcommittee over the past five years, including subcommittee chair Mike Lee of Utah, and one of the four Democrats, Chris Coons of Connecticut. (Connecticut is home to Aetna and Cigna.)
The companies also spend large sums of money every year lobbying members of Congress. Aetna alone spent $3.5 million in internal and external lobbying expenses in both 2013 and 2014, according to its own disclosures and published reports. (It spent $5.5 million in 2010, the year Congress debated and finally approved the Affordable Care Act.)
There is good reason to expect that the company’s lobbying total will spike again this year. As POLITICO and Modern Healthcare, a trade magazine, have reported, Aetna has expanded its stable of lobbyists this year to include six K Street firms: Bloom Strategic Counsel, CGCN Group, The Gibson Group and West Front Strategies, Capitol Hill Consulting Group and Sidley Austin.
Those were strategic hires. Seth Bloom of Bloom Strategic Counsel, for example, is the former top lawyer for the Senate subcommittee that Aetna’s Bertolini will appear before this week. And Joseph Gibson of the Gibson Group previously served as the chief minority counsel to the House Judiciary Committee.
Something else we can expect: the two companies will get major league support from big business allies, including the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the Business Roundtable. In a report detailing its political contributions for 2014, Aetna said it gave the Chamber $250,000 and the Business Roundtable $235,000 that year. Bertolini and Swedish are both on the Roundtable’s board of directors. And Aetna’s chief financial officer, Wayne DeVeydt, is on the Chamber’s board.
While Aetna has to disclose how much its PAC spends each year, it refuses to provide other information that some shareholders would like to see. Among those shareholders: Thomas DiNapoli, New York state’s comptroller, who’s responsible for the state’s $184.5 billion in pension assets, some of which are invested in Aetna stock. DiNapoli filed a shareholder proposal earlier this year asking the company to disclose the names of the tax-exempt groups it gave money to that were created specifically in support of certain political candidates. The proposal did not get enough support from other shareholders to pass, and it’s not likely Aetna will provide the information voluntarily.
An Aetna spokesman was quoted as saying that, “The overwhelming majority of our shareholders agree that additional disclosure is not warranted.”
Meanwhile, keep in mind that all the money Aetna and the other insurers are spending on lobbying is not just intended to influence Congress. The real lobbying focus will be on persuading Justice Department officials to approve the acquisitions.
Wendell Potter is a former insurance industry PR executive who has turned his efforts to informing the public of how for-profit insurance companies operate. A senior analyst at the Center for Public Integrity, he is also the author of “Deadly Spin: An Insurance Company Insider Speaks Out on How Corporate PR is Killing Health Care and Deceiving Americans” and “Obamacare: What’s in It for Me? What Everyone Needs to Know About the Affordable Care Act.” He can be reached via the Center. This article first appeared on his blog. Reprinted by permission of the author.
