fig1

Figure 1. An original representation of the healthcare data lake. The surface level is comprised of traditional, coded metrics such as patient demographics (e.g., age, sex, BMI) as well as diagnostic and procedural codes (e.g., ICD and CPT codes). These data are highly “structured”, stored in ways that are easily interpretable by computers and humans alike. Deeper regions of the data lake contain a vast amount of “semi-structured” or “unstructured” patient data. This includes radiology and imaging, digital pathology, clinical documentation, patient-reported outcomes, nutritional data, wearable biotechnology and sensors, genetics, environmental data, and population/epidemiological data. Modern computing and methods in AI can harness the wealth of information in the EHR data lake to enable human-designed, machine-powered decision making in surgery. BMI: Body mass index; ICD: International Classification of Diseases; CPT: Current Procedural Terminology; EHR: electronic health record.