China to teach the world big data in everyday life: Carnegie Mellon computer scientist

Running neck and neck with the US as the world’s most active economies in AI development, China is expected to take a further step forward and teach the world how to use society-scale big data to improve people’s life quality, according to an American computer scientist.

(Professor Tom Mitchell from the School of Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University, addresses the 2018 GMIC Beijing on April 27. Photo courtesy of GMIC Beijing)

Speaking at the 2018 Global Mobile Internet Conference (GMIC) Beijing on April 27, Professor Tom Mitchell from the School of Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University called China a unique, big opportunity to set the example, thanks to its vast data mine and top-down government structure.

Mitchell focused his examples on health care, which is a major public concern around the globe.

With regard to infectious disease outbreaks, more timely and targeted medical advice or emergent warnings is possible if people’s geo-location data can be merged. Such data can be captured by various companies when people use different apps, including scan-and-pay mobile payment apps and aviation maps, he noted.

China’s hundreds of millions of health records will also be beneficial to increase understanding of disease diagnosis and hence improve treatment methods, according to Mitchell.

The professor suggested that national data standards be set up on how to represent, collate, and provide high-value data and urged authorities to take opportunities that are less profitable for private companies. He also called for more government support to university researchers so as to pool in their efforts for the social good.

(Photo by Jiang Jie/People's Daily Online)

China, meanwhile, has also been contemplating an efficient way of data exploitation, especially in public health. In 2016, the State Council issued the first guideline on big data health development, while two years later the nation’s first sharing platform for big data on health was unveiled in Hangzhou this February.

On April 28, the first national health big data research institute was launched in Beijing. Jointly built by Peking University and the Chinese Health Information and Big Data Association, the institute aims to further strengthen public health data sharing for medical service improvements.