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throwaway4103

9 karma · joined April 5, 2017

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throwaway4103··on Ask HN: What medical datasets do you need?
Please oh please, Chronic Fatigue Syndrome. The potential for ML is absolutely huge. Some people have already collected or are working to collect genetic and other data on a large scale [1] [2] [3], so it does exist.

CFS is interesting because:

a) Patients' symptoms appear to fluctuate "randomly" but are actually typically a complex function of genetics, blood markers, exercise, diet, medication and other factors.

b) There is considerable low-hanging fruit for pattern recognition, since despite the prevalence of the disease almost nobody has done serious ML work in this space.

c) Huge market opportunity - prevalence is comparable to HIV, and specialists often cite CFS as causing more disability [4] [5].

[1] http://simmaronresearch.com/

[2] http://www.nova.edu/nim/research/mecfs-genes.html

[3] https://med.stanford.edu/chronicfatiguesyndrome.html

[4] https://consults.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/10/15/readers-ask-a-...

[5] Dr. Daniel Peterson (Introduction to Research and Clinical Conference, Fort Lauderdale, Florida, October 1994; published in JCFS 1995:1:3-4:123-125)