{"id":133752,"date":"2024-09-10T00:09:51","date_gmt":"2024-09-10T00:09:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.techrepublic.com\/?p=4260339"},"modified":"2024-09-10T00:09:51","modified_gmt":"2024-09-10T00:09:51","slug":"databricks-leverages-ai-to-advance-cancer-research-infrastructure-in-australia","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cloudnewshub.com\/?p=133752","title":{"rendered":"Databricks Leverages AI to Advance Cancer Research, Infrastructure in Australia"},"content":{"rendered":"<div><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/assets.techrepublic.com\/uploads\/2024\/09\/tr_20240904-databricks-ai-use-cases-australia.jpg\" class=\"ff-og-image-inserted\"><\/div>\n<p>In Australia, The Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre and the John Holland Group, an infrastructure and construction firm, have turned to cloud data and AI platform Databricks to solve significant data fragmentation problems that were hindering their ability to draw insights from business data.<\/p>\n<p>Speaking at Databricks\u2019 Data + AI World Tour in Sydney, Australia last month, tech leaders at both organisations reported facing challenges such as siloed data, competing business areas, data integration issues, and legacy systems, prompting the need to seek a cloud data solution.<\/p>\n<h2><span class=\"ez-toc-section\" id=\"Peter_MacCallum_Cancer_Centre_consolidates_data_to_use_AI\"><\/span>Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre consolidates data to use AI<span class=\"ez-toc-section-end\"><\/span><\/h2>\n<p>Peter Mac\u2019s legacy data infrastructure limited its ability to effectively leverage big data and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.techrepublic.com\/article\/artificial-intelligence-cheat-sheet\/\">AI<\/a> across its extensive clinical and research operations. The legacy technology also jeopardized its mission to improve the lives of people with cancer, including the use of AI to improve clinical decision making and accelerate biological insights and drug discovery.<\/p>\n<h3>Problems with data infrastructure<\/h3>\n<p>During the conference, Jason Li, head of the bioinformatics core facility in Peter Mac\u2019s cancer research division, said that:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Peter Mac was dealing with various siloed data and legacy systems.<\/li>\n<li>The complexity and volume of both clinical and research data across the cancer centre\u2019s operations posed challenges in areas such as data storage and data analytics.<\/li>\n<li>Ethical, privacy, and safety concerns were all key factors for the governance of Peter Mac\u2019s data and the deployment of any future AI use cases.<\/li>\n<li>Integration between clinical and research departments complicated the data governance challenge because each had different data requirements.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>SEE: <a href=\"https:\/\/www.techrepublic.com\/article\/apac-survey-findings-informatica-generative-ai\/\">Informatica claims data fragmentation a barrier to AI in APAC<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Li said Peter Mac selected Databricks to help it harmonise data across the centre and support advanced analytics, including AI, while meeting data security and privacy requirements in health care.<\/p>\n<h3>Expanding into new AI use cases<\/h3>\n<p>Peter Mac first tested the AI potential of the Databricks platform with an AI transformation pilot project:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>The centre created an end-to-end AI lifecycle, which involved applying deep learning to the analysis of gigapixel whole-slide images to quantify a new biomarker for breast cancer prognosis.<\/li>\n<li>Databricks supported the AI lifecycle \u2014 from initial data ingestion to model deployment and monitoring \u2014 in what Li said made the project time and cost efficient;<\/li>\n<li>The results of the project could have \u201cgreat promise\u201d for enhancing breast cancer prognosis.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Li said speed across the project was a big advantage: \u201cWe estimate that with Databricks, we have sped up the development process by fivefold, and reduced communication overheads across stakeholders by tenfold, allowing us to bring innovations to the market earlier to benefit patients.\u201d<\/p>\n<h3>AI strategy now includes future projects<\/h3>\n<p>AI has grown into a larger part of Peter Mac\u2019s strategy. Databricks is supporting the cancer centre in three additional use cases: genomics, radiation oncology, and cancer imaging. Additionally, Peter Mac is:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Extending the AI program to include mainstream bioinformatics, which includes population genetics projects that involve large sample sizes and large amounts of genomic data.<\/li>\n<li>Applying advances in Large Language Models and Retrieval Augmented Generation to extract knowledge from clinical and radiology reports.<\/li>\n<li>Planning to implement LLMs in the future for genomics and transcriptomics research, which analyses RNA or the transcriptome to remain competitive in cancer research.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<aside class=\"pinbox right\">\n<h3 class=\"heading\">More Australia coverage<\/h3>\n<\/aside>\n<h2><span class=\"ez-toc-section\" id=\"John_Holland_aims_to_unify_data_across_construction_operations\"><\/span>John Holland aims to unify data across construction operations<span class=\"ez-toc-section-end\"><\/span><\/h2>\n<p>Meanwhile, John Holland managed 80 large-scale infrastructure projects worth AUD $13.2 billion in 2023. However, Travis Rousell, the company\u2019s head of data and analytics, said its legacy data warehouse environment was fragmented and difficult to integrate.<\/p>\n<p><strong>SEE: <a href=\"https:\/\/www.techrepublic.com\/article\/how-to-improve-data-quality-in-data-lakes\/\">How to improve data quality in data lakes<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe\u2019ve got all the typical problems everybody\u2019s had historically with data warehouses and data problems,\u201d Rousell said. \u201cOur legacy data warehouse environment was built incrementally over 20 years. It\u2019s slowly evolved and developed out, and we\u2019ve created this really swampy set of data silos.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Rousell added: \u201cWe could build BI [Business Intelligence] and reports on the front of those, but joining that data together to be able to create insights into the flow of activities and behaviors that are occurring so that we can drive change across our business has been a really difficult process for us.\u201d<\/p>\n<h3>A unified data platform to deliver useful insights<\/h3>\n<p>John Holland set out to create a unified data platform to unlock data for business value. This was part of the group\u2019s effort to drive innovation and competitive advantage in its industry through modern data and digital practices as part of a broader digital transformation push.<\/p>\n<p>The organisation has sought to:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Provide a unified and integrated view of data across the business.<\/li>\n<li>Manage governance of data across separately managed projects.<\/li>\n<li>Achieve a focus on data engineering rather than platform engineering.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h3>Cost savings come from better data management<\/h3>\n<p>John Holland has so far delivered several core business processes to Databricks\u2019 data lake, including project management, project operations, project controls, safety, and fleet analytics.<\/p>\n<p>As a result of using Databricks, Rousell said that John Holland had:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Reduced platform infrastructure costs by 46% on like-for-like workflows compared with legacy environments;<\/li>\n<li>Reduced data engineering development effort and time by 30% by building out new data products and models.<\/li>\n<li>Migrated over 600 users to data products provisioned through the Databricks data lakehouse.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h3>IT becoming an enabler for John Holland\u2019s business<\/h3>\n<p>Rousell said that Databricks ensures IT and technology do not constrain the business from progressing.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI think the biggest thing for me that we\u2019re achieving by doing this is we\u2019re creating this data culture of \u2018yes\u2019 within John Holland,\u201d Rousell explained. \u201cHistorically, the difficulty in provisioning new and innovative products has meant we\u2019ve had to stand up large slow projects and underdeliver for the business.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cNow, if the business has an idea, we can say yes; we can deploy them a data workspace that gives them access to all the capability and tooling they\u2019ll need, and they can go and build that at the speed.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In Australia, The Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre and the John Holland Group, an infrastructure and construction firm, have turned to cloud data and AI platform Databricks to solve significant data fragmentation problems that were hindering their ability to draw insights from business data. Speaking at Databricks\u2019 Data + AI World Tour in Sydney, Australia last [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[77,490,40,783],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-133752","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-artificial-intelligence","category-australia","category-cloud","category-cloudsync"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cloudnewshub.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/133752","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cloudnewshub.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cloudnewshub.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cloudnewshub.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cloudnewshub.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=133752"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/cloudnewshub.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/133752\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cloudnewshub.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=133752"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cloudnewshub.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=133752"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cloudnewshub.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=133752"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}