The Data Industry

PREFACE

In late 2009 my doctoral advisor, Dr. Yangyong Zhu at Fudan University published his book Datalogy, and sent me a copy as a gift. On the title page he wrote: “Every domain will be implicated in the development of data science theory and methodology, which definitely is becoming an emerging industry.” For months I probed the meaning of these words before I felt able to discuss this point with him. As expected, he meant to encourage me to think deeply in this area and plan for a future career that combines my work experience and doctoral training in data science.

Ever since then, I have been thinking about this interdisciplinary problem. It took me a couple of years to collect my thoughts, and an additional year to write them down in the form of a book. I chose to put “data industry” in the book's title to impart the typical resource nature and technological feature of “data.” That manuscript was published in Chinese in 2013 by Fudan University Press. In the title The Data Industry, I also wanted to clarify the essence of this new industry, which expands on the theory and concepts of data science, supports the frontier development of multiple scientific disciplines, and explains the natural correlation between data industrial clusters and present-day socioeconomic developments.

With the book now published, I intend to begin my journey into healthcare, with an ultimate goal of achieving the best in experience for all in healthcare through big data analytics. To date, healthcare ...