Each day countless devices—from monitors in hospitals to diagnostic tests to Fitbits—capture huge amounts of health data. That data could change how patients and doctors interact, how diseases are diagnosed and treated, and the amount of control individuals have over their health outcomes.

Participant recap of the mHealth Workshop, held in Chapel Hill, NC in May 2017. The workshop was supported by the South Big Data Hub and the National Consortium for Data Science (NCDS). Wenbin Zhang is a first-year PhD student in the department of information systems at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County. He attended the South Big Data Hub/NCDS Mobile Health Workshop in May with travel support from the South Hub.

Reflections on the South BD Hub mHealth Workshop in May 2017. Chenzhang Bao was a student at the University of Texas at Dallas majoring in information systems. He was one of several students who the South Big Data Hub supported to attend an mHealth Workshop in May. The Conference was held in Chapel Hill and sponsored by the South Big Data Hub and the National Consortium for Data Science in collaboration with the Institute for the Future.

In the age of ubiquitous connectivity and social media, information is at our fingertips. Unfortunately, so is misinformation and often it is hard to tell one from the other.

A recent roundtable discussion sponsored by the South Big Data Hub examined the rapidly changing landscape for building online communities, sharing information, and creating what often appears to be a groundswell of support for particular points of view. 

The workshop participants thoughtfully assessed a wide array of mobile health (mhealth) applications to address health disparities and their environmental influences within the research, legal, policy, environment, and clinical settings. Within the clinical setting, participants identified shifting the point of care to the patient using mHealth technologies as a key priority.

The explosion of social media, blogs, and websites purporting to be news sources, along with a 24-hour news cycle and ubiquitous assess to the internet from cell phones and other devices, means a new information environment.

The biggest challenge the DOT faces is fatal crashes. To understand why fatalities are on the rise, the DOT has started working with the private sector to bring more data to the table. Read to learn how the private sector is assisting in this effort.

Participant recap of the 2017 International Conference on Social Computing, Behavioral-Cultural Modeling, & Prediction and Behavior Representation in Modeling and Simulation (SBP-BRiMS 2017) was held in Washington, DC, in July, and prominent fields applying social computing techniques include public health and healthcare. Participant is Kyong Shin, PhD, a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Tennessee Health Science Center – Oak Ridge National Lab (UTHSC-ORNL), Center for Biomedical Informatics, Department of Pediatrics (affiliated with Le Bonheur Children's Hospital). She attended the 2017 International Conference on Social Computing, Behavioral-Cultural Modeling, & Prediction and Behavior Representation in Modeling and Simulation (SBP-BRiMS) with support from the South Big Data Hub.