BD4BCWC

In October 2015, Susan G. Komen® convened BD4BC: Big Data for Breast Cancer with generous support from the Robertson Foundation. The intent was to explore the opportunities and challenges of incorporating big data applications into oncology research and clinical care, using breast cancer as a “case study” or “proof of concept”. The conversation at BD4BC focused largely on the biomedical and clinical research that is taking place and how it would benefit from big data applications.

Komen is continuing the big data conversation by convening the BD4BC – West Coast Conference (BD4BCWC) to take a deeper dive into informatics and analytics that are currently in use to curate large amounts of data, gather patient-derived lifestyle and health-related data, and machine learning systems that are able to integrate large amounts of data from multiple sources. By focusing on these systems and their capabilities, we hope to leverage these capabilities for breast cancer applications. The goal of this meeting is to better understand current capabilities of big data applications and to encourage the development of multidisciplinary collaborations that will work together to demonstrate the feasibility of applying big data technology to several breast cancer-focused use cases including development of evidence-based decision support to improve breast cancer treatment, quality improvement of health care delivery, and basic discovery to drive research.