Wolfram Alpha and Its Medical Powers

Stephen Wolfram, the British physicist and mathematician behind Mathematica software launched his latest project on Monday (May 18th), Wolfram Alpha. The site, now in public alpha after much hype and fanfare, calls itself a “computational knowledge engine,” and wants to “make all systematic knowledge immediately computable by anyone.” What exactly does that mean? Essentially it’s like an extremely beefed up version of Mathematica that’s linked to a large database of any and all structured information it can collect on the web. Want to know the pH of maple syrup? It’s in there; simply try the query “pH of maple syrup.” But it goes well beyond simple descriptive statistics. Let’s say you’d like to compare the distribution of the name Mike to the name Paul. You simply enter both into a query, and you’ll quickly see how crazy-popular the name Mike was in the 80s, that most Mike’s alive today are between 40 and 55 years old, and that Paul still dwarfs Mike in terms of volume (also, lookout, the name Silas is making a come-back). But the real kicker might lie in the ability to quickly mash up data from different sources. For instance, Wolfram enables quick glances at calculations such as the ratio between the US GDP and the length of roads in Europe over time.
Wolfram Alpha is an ambitious project, and naturally, as part of its expansive scope, it’ll include a slew of medical data and formulas. Already it’s got quite a bit. Dr. Schwartz, over at A Disease a Day recently profiled 5 searches on Wolfram Alpha that’ll make you healthy. These include quickly calculating your BMI, seeing how many calories you’ve burned doing exercise, knowing your risk for heart disease, interpreting your medical test results, and estimating your birth due date. It’s even good for better understanding of your own blood pressure. Just try entering the query “blood pressure 145/90.”

Wolfram Alpha may also be useful to the practicing clinician. A search for “creatinine=0.9mg/dL, adult male” returns the 95% reference ranges for the test, a histogram of the general male USA population distribution for the test, and even the CPT codes and test panels. Centralizing this sort of medical data and making it quickly available may prove highly useful. At the very least, it’s quite a lot of fun to play with.
For a more detailed introduction to the site, watch Stephen himself walking through a sample of what it can do.
Link: Wolfram Aplha
More: Sample medical queries you can try with Wolfram Alpha