This article was taken from the October 2012 issue of Wired magazine. Be the first to read Wired's articles in print before they're posted online, and get your hands on loads of additional content by subscribing online.
If you're a woman, this could be a personalised snap-shot of your health.
Researchers at the SENSEable City Lab (Wired 04.11) at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology visualised the health records of seven million patients in the US, seeking connections and clusters between diseases. The researchers mapped the data on to an interactive graphic connecting 160 diseases -- "Let's say one patient has had flu and diabetes together," says data analyst Dominik Dahlem, who worked on the project. "Then we draw an arrow between those diseases. If you do that for all patients and their diseases, we get a big-picture view."
The data came from General Electric, which compiled e-health records from mid-1999 to July 2010. "It's not just about analysing data, but about telling stories," says Dahlem, 35. "Each person can visualise their own story."
View the infographic full screen in our gallery.
This article was originally published by WIRED UK
