Minerva

摘要

Certain expressions, like "telemedicine," "personalisation," and "big data" have Minerva turningto the owl on her shoulderwith a grimace. They seem to be used mostly by academics and politicians to mean whateverthey please. Big data can be useless data. Fruit can hang low but be largely inedible. These sour reflections are inspired bya recentsurvey of 32832 patients in New South Wales (BMJ Open 2014;4:e005768, doi:10.1136/bmjopen-2014-005768), which showed a poor correlation between self reported health problems and diagnoses recorded when patients were admitted to 313 hospitals in that Australian state. There was reasonable agreement about diabetes, poor agreement about cardiac disease, and almost no agreement about obesity.