Data Lake to Give Researchers Around the World Access to Academic-Level Chiropractic Data
Watch a video with Dr. Jay Greenstein and Brad Cost about the latest on the Chiropractic Future data lake project.
In May 2023, the Chiropractic Future Strategic Plan announced a major collaboration with the Spears School of Business Analytics and Data Science at Oklahoma State University on the creation and development of a national healthcare data lake for the chiropractic profession. The data lake will contain millions of patient data files, providing a resource for improving patient care and conducting further chiropractic research.
A data lake is a centralized repository designed to store, filter, and secure large amounts of structured, semi-structured, and unstructured data. It can store data in its native format and process that data in any variety, ignoring the different size limits. Chiropractic data stored in the data lake will come from a variety of sources, including electronic medical records data, claims data, and insurance payer data.
The project is now at the midway point, and Brad Cost, co-chair of the Chiropractic Future’s ChiroTech Consortium Workgroup, expects testing of the data lake to begin by next summer. He also expects the data lake to “give researchers around the world access to this unlimited, free, academic-level chiropractic data.”
The first part of the project consisted of designing the data lake. The second part is focused on developing data query tools that will make the lake more digestible and searchable for chiropractic researchers and professionals and having a working, beta version completed. The possible integration and implementation of artificial intelligence and machine learning into the data lake. By the time the data lake is fully constructed, it will house more than 20 million patient data files.
For a story on the chiropractic data lake from the Oklahoma State University, click here.
About the Chiropractic Future Strategic Plan
In November of 2019, a visionary idea was born: Build a strategic plan, which will lead the entire chiropractic profession into an essential and thriving future. In August of 2020, that visionary idea became The Chiropractic Future Visioning and Strategic Planning Project. Massive quantitative and qualitative data gathered from all corners of the profession, successfully identified common goals and priorities. Intensely spirited and collaborative workgroup sessions, representing the breadth of the profession, accomplished the heavy lift of creating an actionable, measurable plan. Eighteen months after the idea was born, a historic 2021 – 2026 strategic plan was developed. For more information, click here.
