A New Model for Medical Discovery

Clinical studies can take up to a decade. Duke researchers aim to leverage existing data to speed the process of finding answers

drawing of a doctor at a computer

This is a summary of a story that originally appeared on the Office of Interdisciplinary Programs.

Medical researchers face a collective problem of too many questions, too little time. “There’s a huge amount of questions that need to be answered,” says Associate Professor of Neurology Brian Mac Grory. “We need to figure out how to treat people with medicines, how to treat people with surgeries and how to understand what causes different diseases. We can’t possibly answer all of them by designing new studies and clinical trials every time.” 

Could there be a more efficient approach to answering medical questions that can inform physicians, policymakers, business and the public? Leveraging existing data is a promising way to get answers without requiring a time-consuming and expensive clinical trial. 

Last year, Mac Grory and some colleagues across Duke received an Interdisciplinary Hub grant from the Office of the Provost to find out. They call their group ORBIT, or Observational Research Building Interdisciplinary Therapeutic Advances.

“All of us in our day-by-day lives have many thousands of pieces of data collected about us,” Mac Grory points out. “Data that’s collected as part of medical care, for example, [comes from] billing, pharmacy, quality assurance, documentation to help coordinate between departments of the hospital … all these data are being collected for other reasons, but medical research can be done using these data. We can potentially do a study in a very efficient manner.”

ORBIT brings together researchers with complementary skills in AI, economics, statistics, data science, population health and clinical medicine.

“One of the innovative things about ORBIT is that we have economists as a central part of the team,” Mac Grory says. “This elevates our work by bringing in new voices and perspectives to bear on difficult problems in medicine.”

For more information, visit the Interdisciplinary Programs website.