Using Data for Good, Especially in Times Like These

Regardless of where you live, what you do, or your political leanings, you have to admit that the last six-eight months have been one for the record books.   Kids of all ages are learning from a distance, friends are communicating more than ever through group video chat, and many of us are working from home—some for the first time—connected to our laptops and on video meetings all day, every day.  

It's times like these that make you realize that our communities are held together by people working with people, people teaching people, people helping people.  In the digital world we inhabit, nearly everything we do is instrumented—our movements, our actions, our waking and sleeping times, our likes and dislikes.   There so much data out there that it's often hard to make sense of it.  But we have to harness the power of that data along with analytics and data science to help our fellow citizens. 

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In August 2020, Neviana Zhgaba, a senior technical program manager at General Electric and a member of the board of directors of Oracle Developer Tools User Group (ODTUG) presented at the closing session of the Oracle Analytics Summit.  Her session was entitled "Imagine Data for Good".   She discussed work that she and others did to help out colleagues after record-breaking floods in North Carolina in 2018—all using data available from public sources.   You can view her profile and her session at 'Data for good' movement spurs action in the fight for causes.

Think of all the ways you might be able to use your skills to help communities in need.  One of the more interesting subjects out there is Population Health data, available from sources such as the World Health Organization (WHO) and other government and non-government organization sources.   Rich data is available by country, even down to population groups (over 60, disease types, by gender, etc.) that can help understand how that group compares to others.  For example, we recently analyzed some WHO population health data and found that life expectancy significantly increases if a person makes it to age 60, vs the population as a whole.  That nugget spoke volumes to me; embracing preventative care earlier in life will likely mean you'll live longer. Your first reaction might be "well, of course, that's true", but to see it borne out in the numbers in gratifying.

For someone like me who is over 60 and (begrudgingly) embraced preventative care in my 40s after not seeing a doctor for over 20 years, it was heartening to see—backed up by solid data worldwide.  And a bonus for me -- the "60 Bump" is more pronounced for males than females.  No matter how much of a bump males got, females have a much longer life expectancy than males across the globe. 

There are many organizations dedicated to the Data for Good principle, including DataKind and Data4Change.  Take a look through these sites—they will inspire you. In the times we live in, we all want to do everything we can to help our communities. Turn your expertise in analytics and data into something that can identify and improve the lives of those around us—both locally and globally.

And to learn how you can benefit from an analytics solution from Oracle, visit Oracle.com/analytics, and follow us on Twitter @OracleAnalytics.