Nicholas Marko “occupies the space between compute and clinical” in the field of health service Big Data. As both a clinical brain surgeon and the Chief Data Officer for Geisinger Health System Foundation, Dr. Marko is uniquely qualified to evaluate how data science advances improve the patient experience.

During an interview with theCUBE, SiliconANGLE’s Media team broadcasting live today from MIT’s annual data science symposium, Marko explained that he fell in love with what the computing team was doing while in medical school. Consequently, he went on to take off a year at the end of his residency to study applied mathematics at Cambridge in England.

Using Big Data to shift from population-centric to patient-centric

Marko described the data that Geisinger is working with as a “spectrum of sizes,” from imaging and physician’s notes to the terabytes of a patient’s genome. By being able to convert all this information into a computable block of Big Data, Marko hopes to continue to improve the shift from “population-centric” to “patient-centric.” The low-lying fruit in these developments include creating “precision medicine” based on “predictions on data.” Marko looks for “early wins” in clinical trials and “optimiz[ing] the hospitalization experience for patients.”

Other areas are very much in an exploratory stage, he explained, such as the applications to the human genome. However, with advances such as predicting individual risk profiles and responses to treatment, Marko said it is an “exciting time to be in this phase.” As Hadoop and other software continue to advance, Marko predicts advances developing from being able to “put in a lot more information and compute on it.” The industry is looking for improvements in costs as Big Data is able to “convert anecdotes [of waste and opportunities] in a larger framework that you can study.”

In regards to HIPPA (patient privacy regulations) concerns, Marko stated that “most patients are willing to share” their information. He would like to see HIPPA make it easier for patients to share information since so may are willing to participate to help the field.

Marko said that the secret to balancing his administrative and clinical duties is building a good team. He related that the “daily patient interaction” informs his CDO responsibilities as well.

Watch the full interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE and theCUBE’s coverage of MITCDOIQ Symposium 2015.

Photo by SiliconANGLE