盡管大數據有潛力治愈癌癥的言論甚囂塵上，但“白宮抗癌登月計劃特別小組”（White House’s Cancer Moonshot Taskforce）的執行董事格雷格·西蒙對此表示懷疑——至少現在不行。

上周三在圣迭戈的《財富》頭腦風暴健康大會上，西蒙問道：“什么大數據？我們的健康系統里面有數據，基本上僅供內部交流使用。我知道一些你們不知道的。你們也知道一些我不知道的。如果我需要知道你們知道的，我就會給你們打電話，發郵件。你們則會把信息傳給我。”

他繼續道：“大數據是人人都喜歡的熱門概念。但在醫療領域，我們的信息仍然十分匱乏。”他指出，盡管早在20世紀20年代，美國就建立了記錄每一筆股票交易的數據庫，但許多病人甚至現在都沒有自己的個人醫療記錄。

西蒙的機構正是許多致力于解放醫療數據的組織之一。今年6月，美國建立了儲存基因組和臨床數據，供研究者使用的數據庫Genomic Data Commons。對此，他認為成效一般。數據庫如今從癌癥和腫瘤基因圖譜（Cancer Genome Atlas）處獲得了3.2萬人的原始基因組數據——這比6月建立時的1.4萬人已經多出許多，而且很快就將收入幾十萬人的數據。而自6月以來，這些數據的訪問量已經達到50億次。

西蒙把這個稱為“好消息”。壞消息呢？美國政府建立癌癥和腫瘤基因圖譜時，投入了1億美元從5萬人處獲取數據。然而，其中2.4萬人的數據如今已經不可用了。

西蒙表示：“所以，大數據目前就像壞數據。數據庫在建立時，沒有依照病理學和醫學標準，也不像我們收集財經和天氣數據一樣，隨時隨地都有數據傳來。”

他也談到了大數據在抗擊癌癥上的前景：“它會起到作用嗎？會的。但是我們必須改變信息共享的文化，因為我們共享信息的態度，已經遠遠落后于我們共享信息的能力。”（財富中文網）

作者：Erika Fry

譯者：嚴匡正

While there’s a lot of breathless talk about the potential of big data to do just that, Greg Simon, the Executive Director of the White House’s Cancer Moonshot Taskforce, is a skeptic—at least for now.

“What big data?” asked Simon speaking at Fortune’s Brainstorm Health conference in San Diego Wednesday. “We have in the health system, what is basically insider trading. I know something you don’t know. You know something I don’t know. When I need to know what you know, I call you, I email you. You fax me stuff.”

He continued: “Big data is the big yellow object that everyone is in love with. But we still live in an information scarce medical world.” He noted that while the U.S. has a database of every stock transaction dating back to the 1920s, many patients can’t even liberate their own personal medical records.

His organization is one of many working to make medical data free (or freer). And of the Genomic Data Commons, a database introduced in June to pool genomic and clinical data and make it available to researchers, he reports modest success. The Commons now holds the raw genomic data, from the Cancer Genome Atlas, of 32,000 people—up from 14,000 at its June launch (it will soon be several hundred thousand people). And that data has been accessed 5 billion times since June.

Simon qualified that as “the good news.” The bad? When the government launched the Cancer Genome Atlas, it spent $100 million to get data from 50,000 people. Of that, data from 24,000 people was unusable, he said.

“So big data is in the middle of bad data—which is being created by a lack pathology and medical standards, and the lack of ubiquitous, instant data transmission like we do with financial and weather data,” Simon said.

He added of big data’s prospects in tackling cancer: “Can it make a difference? Yes. But we have to change the culture of sharing information, because our ability to share has far outpaced our attitude about sharing it.”