Collaborative mining and interpretation of large-scale data for biomedical research insights

PLoS One. 2014 Sep 30;9(9):e108600. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0108600. eCollection 2014.

Abstract

Biomedical research becomes increasingly interdisciplinary and collaborative in nature. Researchers need to efficiently and effectively collaborate and make decisions by meaningfully assembling, mining and analyzing available large-scale volumes of complex multi-faceted data residing in different sources. In line with related research directives revealing that, in spite of the recent advances in data mining and computational analysis, humans can easily detect patterns which computer algorithms may have difficulty in finding, this paper reports on the practical use of an innovative web-based collaboration support platform in a biomedical research context. Arguing that dealing with data-intensive and cognitively complex settings is not a technical problem alone, the proposed platform adopts a hybrid approach that builds on the synergy between machine and human intelligence to facilitate the underlying sense-making and decision making processes. User experience shows that the platform enables more informed and quicker decisions, by displaying the aggregated information according to their needs, while also exploiting the associated human intelligence.

Publication types

  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

  • Algorithms
  • Biomedical Research / organization & administration*
  • Cooperative Behavior
  • Data Mining / methods*
  • Humans
  • Information Dissemination*
  • Software*

Grants and funding

This publication has been produced in the context of the EU Collaborative Project “DICODE - Mastering Data-Intensive Collaboration and Decision” which is co-funded by the European Commission under the contract FP7-ICT-257184. SC GT MT and NK received funcing from the above project. This publication reflects only the author's views and the Community is not liable for any use that may be made of the information contained therein. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.