At the 3rd a2 National Symposium, held at the Harvard Club of Boston, Griffin Weber, MD, PhD, delivered a plenary address on the opportunities and challenges of using large-scale health data for aging and dementia research. Dr. Weber is an associate professor of medicine and biomedical informatics at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and Harvard Medical School. His work focuses on the development of data infrastructure to support clinical and population-level research.
Introduced by Dr. Niteesh Choudhry, MD, PhD, professor at Harvard Medical School, executive director of the Center for Healthcare Delivery Sciences at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, and co-director of MassAITC, Dr. Weber’s talk addressed the limitations of traditional electronic health records, the potential of federated research networks, and the role of machine learning in improving data quality. He highlighted platforms such as i2b2 and SHRINE, which allow for more efficient data sharing across institutions, and emphasized the importance of integrating varied data sources to produce more accurate insights.
Watch the full video above to explore how big data is being harnessed to advance aging research.
