Data is the new oil, says DataLEADS

PETALING JAYA: The future is in big data and how to make meaningful sense of them.

DataLEADS chief executive officer Syed Nazakat said huge chunks of data were produced in every part of the world, which resulted in a global problem of trying to make sense of that data.

“Data is the new oil.” Nazakat said during a Data Boot Camp, a workshop to promote data-driven reporting, at Menara Star on Saturday.

He said there was a data deluge on finance, health and development which could be useful in drawing up policies and improving the level of governance.

Nazakat pointed out that in India, 80% of deaths in the country were not medically registered.

“This means nobody knows why people are dying; whether it is be­cause of heart diseases or pollution.

“So, we don’t know what is happening and this is a life-and-death question,’’ he said, adding that he was impressed with the Health Ministry’s data on the top 10 killer diseases in Malaysia, but said “how that data is made use of is ano­ther matter”.

He also said data in annual reports and PDF files would be a waste if nobody used it.

BookDoc CEO Datuk Chevy Beh said he was trying to acquire data on healthcare.

“If 70% of all doctor visitations in a month are to orthopaedic specialists, then we can alert the Health Ministry. They can zoom in on the problem and do something about it,” he said.

BookDoc allows users in Malaysia, Singapore, Hong Kong and Thailand to access healthcare providers.