[nradov]

Numerous companies have already tried and failed with this approach to medical research. Naively you might think that you could just suck in huge quantities of de-identified patient charts to find all sorts of useful correlations between diagnoses, treatments, and outcomes. But this doesn't actually work because the data quality is so bad: garbage in, garbage out. Doing useful medical research usually requires setting up strict protocols for data entry and patient follow-up.