Healthcare systems around the world are facing vast challenges in responding to trends of aging population, the rise of chronic diseases, resources constraints, and the growing focus of citizens on healthy living and prevention. Consequently, there is an increasing focus on answering important questions such as: (1) How do we improve the rate of fast, accurate first-time-right diagnoses? (2) How can we reduce the huge variance in costs and outcomes in health systems? (3) How do we get people to take more accountability for their own health? (4) How can we provide better health care at lower cost? 

On the other hand, digitization and rapid advances in ICT technology are enabling the capture of more data than ever before, including medical health records, people’s vital signs and their lifestyle, data about health systems, and data about population health in general. This tsunami of data per se does not immediately result in better healthcare insights, but, on the contrary, if not used properly, it can be a burden to people and result in clinicians spending more time with computers than face to face with patients, or citizens being lost in data they are getting from health trackers and many different sensors, or, again, patients reluctant to accept assistive technologies. This is exactly the point where unlocking the power of data science and artificial intelligence can help by making sense of the large amounts of data, turning them into actionable insights providing mutual benefits to both patient and medical professionals, also helping in answering the abovementioned questions.

世界各地的医疗保健系统在应对人口老龄化趋势、慢性病增加、资源紧张以及公民对健康生活和预防的日益关注方面面临着巨大的挑战。因此，人们越来越关注于回答以下重要问题：（1）如何提高快速、准确的首次正确诊断率？（2） 我们如何减少卫生系统中成本和结果的巨大差异？（3） 我们如何让人们对自己的健康承担更多的责任？（4） 我们如何以更低的成本提供更好的医疗保健？

另一方面，信息和通信技术的数字化和快速发展使人们能够获得比以往任何时候都多的数据，包括医疗健康记录、人们的生命体征及其生活方式、卫生系统的数据以及总体人口健康数据。这场数据海啸本身并不能立即带来更好的医疗保健洞察力，相反，如果使用不当，它可能会给人们带来负担，并导致临床医生花更多的时间在电脑上，而不是与患者面对面交流，或者公民迷失在他们从健康跟踪器和许多不同传感器获得的数据中，或者，病人又不愿意接受辅助技术。这正是释放数据科学和人工智能的力量的关键所在，它可以帮助理解大量的数据，将它们转化为可操作的见解，为患者和医疗专业人员提供互惠互利，也有助于回答上述问题。