This week, we begin with an article on Privacy International’s report that revealed how health data collected by dieting apps is not protected under HIPAA. Next, we have a piece on how free & openly available database of 20,000 proteins will change biological research. The following article examines how Stanford’s AIMI is offering free repository of AI-ready medical datasets to spur crowd-sourced AI applications. Following that, we have an article about an increase in use of alternative data sources by investors & economists due to Covid-19, to know about market-sensitive data trends. Next is a piece about the importance of humans in data wrangling, i.e., process of data prep & cleaning, to ensure data quality & accurate results. Finally, we have an article on IBM’s annual report that highlights remote working to be the major cause behind increase in global data breach cost, with highest average cost for healthcare industry.
What Exactly Are Dieting Apps Doing With All Your Data?
If you’ve ever tried out a dieting app, you might have filled out a questionnaire asking you about your body type, weight, exercise, and eating habits, and possibly even medical information, like whether you have diabetes. Ostensibly that data is used to inform what kind of diet the app suggests, but new research reveals diet companies may be using it in other ways. According to London-based non-profit Privacy International, diet apps are sometimes sharing this data with third-party marketers and not protecting it securely.
AI’s Human Protein Database A ‘Great Leap’ For Research
Scientists last month unveiled the most exhaustive database yet of the proteins that form the building blocks of life, in a breakthrough where observers said would “fundamentally change biological research”. Every cell in every living organism is triggered to perform its function by proteins that deliver constant instructions to maintain health and ward off infection. Unlike the genome — the complete sequence of human genes that encode cellular life — the human proteome is constantly changing in response to genetic instructions and environmental stimuli.
The Open-Source Movement Comes To Medical Datasets
In a move to democratize research on artificial intelligence and medicine, Stanford’s Center for Artificial Intelligence in Medicine and Imaging (AIMI) is dramatically expanding what is already the world’s largest free repository of AI-ready annotated medical imaging datasets. Artificial intelligence has become an increasingly pervasive tool for interpreting medical images, from detecting tumors in mammograms and brain scans to analyzing ultrasound videos of a person’s pumping heart.
How Investors Are Using Alternative Data To Track The Inflation Debate
With the debate over inflation dominating financial markets as the global economy reopens from the COVID-19 pandemic, investors are turning to a number of so-called alternative-data sources in an effort to get a more timely read on what’s happening to prices around the world. While readings on the U.S. consumer-price index, producer-price index, and the Federal Reserve’s favorite measure — the personal consumption expenditure deflator — all come around once a month, they’re offering up a backward-looking picture of where prices stood around three to four weeks earlier.
Data Science Needs Drudges
Data scientist may be one of the sexiest jobs of our century, as Harvard Business Review opines, but it sure does involve a lot of unsexy, manual labor. According to Anaconda’s 2021 State of Data Science survey, survey respondents said they spend “39% of their time on data prep and data cleansing, which is more than the time spent on model training, model selection, and deploying models combined.” Data scientist? More like data janitor.
Global Data Theft Costs Rise To $4.2m A Breach
The average global cost of a data breach rose by about 10 per cent a year to $4.2 million over the past 12 months, according to IBM. Remote working and rapid digital transformation due to the Covid-19 pandemic were behind the increase, the technology company said in its annual Cost of a data breach report 2021. Healthcare organisations had the highest average costs for the 11th year in a row. The average cost was $1.07m higher in organisations where remote work was more prevalent.
Source: https://mailchi.mp/zigram/data-asset-weekly-dispatch_09_august_2
