FDA wants to ban genetic tests by Google-backed 23andme

Posted in Analytics, General

23andme is one of the companies I am always fascinated about from a BigData perspective as they have access to huge amount of data that can dramatically change the healthcare systems in the world and and I have discussed this in many conversations with my friends and colleagues.

About 23andme

23andme is a DNA analysis company and is backed by Google. How does it work? Well you order a kit and provide saliva sample and send your kit back to 23andme. The company runs a DNA analysis and then provides details about your health risk, carrier status and drug response based on a detailed genetic analysis. Why do you need it? Knowing your health risks will allow you to manage your health better and can make some lifestyle changes and take some preventive action. Additionally, you can find out fun stuff, like if you have ancestors in another country. For example, DNA tests reveal that Prince William has ancestor in India.

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Why is FDA worried?

It all sounds great but then why is Food Drug & Administration (FDA) worried? FDA is worried about potential pitfalls of false positive and false negative about health risk assessment and drug response. For instance, a false positive on risk assessment on breast or ovarian cancer could lead a patient to undergo prophylactic surgery or chemotherapy. While a false negative could lead someone to overlook an actual risk that may exist. FDA is also worried if drug response test will lead patients to self-manage their treatments by dose changes or stopping certain drugs.

The real issue is not that the tests are bad – these tests bypasses a physician’s presence and his assessment of patients health and response and expose consumers to the risk of trying to self-manage their own treatment of serious diseases or if incorrect test results are reported.

What 23andme should do is to prove to FDA that the tests work and are accurate. Easy problem you data scientist, huh? It should also educate the consumers about the risk that are inherent in such tests and provide guidance to consumers on how to use the results.

Which has more lines of code – Windows or Mac OSX?

Posted in Data visualization, Technology

If you ever wondered how many lines of code are there in your favorite app, checkout the infographics by Information is beautiful.

And yes, Mac OSX has more lines of code than any Windows OS! Do not miss the last application shown in the infograph.

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One popular notion in software industry is that “the more code you write, the more bugs you end up with”. What does this data say about the quality of these apps?

Some of you may wonder if these apps can be written with much denser code. There are many reasons why that may not be practically possible – primarily to make applications extensible and maintainable. The other reasons for bloated code can simply be poor programming.

However, we will never know that. I don’t think a tool or benchmark exists that can tell a project manager if an application can be written with fewer lines of code. Even if it does, do you really care?

From BYOD to BYOS – A new service model for enterprise

Posted in Hot, Ideas, People & Culture, Technology

These days it is not uncommon for you to access your official mails on your personal Blackberry or Android or iPhone. This is exactly what a BYOD or bring-your-own-device model is. It is quite a challenge for enterprise IT teams to ensure security of network and corporate data every time an employee accesses sales report or downloads sensitive information on his own device.

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The adoption of BYOD is on rise and a recent poll by market researcher IDC shows that more than half the polled companies support employees using their own device. It is also shown that there exists a positive link between usage of employee own device and employee satisfaction. This is a great news as it can help reduce cost as well as boost employee performance.

From BYOD to BYOS

As more employees start to use BYOD model, the boundary is getting pushed beyond devices to include software and services that employees want to use directly. Today 77% of online adults in US use at least one personal cloud service such as Dropbox (a file sharing service). This consumerization of IT is leading to a shift towards more personal choice and ability to personally select the tools that employees want to use. Many products are moving away from perpetual to subscription based model and offering SAAS (software-as-a-service). So, employees are increasingly selecting what is available. Well, if you represent enterprise IT, there are many challenges that you have to deal with.

Security
This is probably the biggest issue to deal with in a BYOS model. Similar to BYOD, organizations need to worry about if these BYOS services meet their security requirements. Moreover concern around providing access to sensitive data has to be solved before the integration can work.

Integration
Though this is somewhat related to security but organizations need to consider any additional cost of hardware and software that these services might need and how requirements across multiple groups can be managed together.

Support
Just like any service model is built with standard SLA, BYOS is no different. It is important to understand them and know the quality of support should things go wrong.

Future proof
Are the services customization and extensible? It is important that BYOS remains compatible with other IT systems and integration points where they are used.

Just like the forces of BYOD models are prevailing, BYOS is here to stay. We better get in front of it!