>> Narrator: Live from Las Vegas, it's theCUBE, covering AWS re:Invent 2017, presented by AWS, Intel, and our ecosystem of partners. >> Hey, welcome back everyone, this is theCUBE's exclusive live coverage here in Las Vegas for AWS Amazon web services re:Invent 2017. I'm John Furrier with Keith Townsend. Our next guest is Laura Stevens, data scientist at the American Heart Association, an AWS customer, welcome to theCUBE. >> Hi, it's nice to be here. >> So, the new architecture, we're seeing all this great stuff, but one of the things that they mention is data is the killer app, that's my word, Verna didn't say that, but essentially saying that. You guys are doing some good work with AWS and precision medicine, what's the story? How does this all work, what are you working with them on? >> Yeah, so the American Heart Association was founded in 1924, and it is the oldest and largest voluntary organization dedicated to curing heart disease and stroke, and I think in the past few years what the American Heart Association has realized is that the potential of technology and data can really help us create innovative ways and really launch precision medicine in a fashion that hasn't been capable to do before. >> What are you guys doing with AWS? What's that, what's the solution? >> Yeah so the HA has strategically partnered with Amazon Web Services to basically use technology as a way to power precision medicine, and so when I say precision medicine, I mean identifying individual treatments, based on one's genetics, their environmental factors, their life factors, that then results in preventative and treatment that's catered to you as an individual rather than kind of a one size fits all approach that is currently happening. >> So more tailored? >> Yeah, specifically tailored to you as an individual. >> What do I do, get a genome sequence? I walk in, they throw a high force computing, sequence my genomes, maybe edit some genes while they're at it, I mean what's going on. There's some cutting edge conversations out there we see in some of the academic areas, course per that was me just throwing that in for fun, but data has to be there. What kind of data do you guys look at? Is it personal data, is it like how big is the data? Give us a sense of some of the data science work that you're doing? >> Yeah so the American Heart Association has launched the Institute for Precision Cardiovascular Medicine, and as a result, with Amazon, they created the precision medicine platform, which is a data marketplace that houses and provides analytic tools that enable high performance computing and data sharing for all sorts of different types of data, whether it be personal data, clinical trial data, pharmaceutical data, other data that's collected in different industries, hospital data, so a variety of data. >> So Laura, there's a lot of think fud out there around the ability to store data in a cloud, but there's also some valid concerns. A lot of individual researchers, I would imagine, don't have the skillset to properly protect data. What is the Heart Association doing with the framework to help your customers protect data? >> Yeah so the I guess security of data, the security of the individual, and the privacy of the individual is at the heart of the AHA, and it's their number one concern, and making anything that they provide that a number one priority, and the way that we do that in partnering with AWS is with this cloud environment we've been able to create even if you have data that you'd like to use sort of a walled garden behind your data so that it's not accessible to people who don't have access to the data, and it's also HIPAA compliant, it meets the standards that the utmost secure standards of health care today. >> So I want to make sure we're clear on this, the Heart Association doesn't collect data themselves. Are you guys creating a platform for your members to leverage this technology? >> So there's, I would so maybe both actually. The American Heart Association does have data that it is associated with, with its volunteers and the hospitals that it's associated with, and then on top of that, we've actually just launched My Research Legacy, which allows individuals of the community to, who want to share their data, whether you're healthy or just sick, either one, they want to share their data and help in aiding to cure heart disease and stroke, and so they can share their own data, and then on top of that, anybody, we are committed to strategically partnering with anybody who's involved and wants to share their data and make their data accessible. >> So I can share my data? >> Yes, you can share your data. >> Wow, so what type of tools do you guys use against that data set and what are some of the outcomes? >> Yeah so I think the foundation is the cloud, and that's where the data is stored and housed, and then from there, we have a variety of different tools that enable researchers to kind of custom build data sets that they want to answer the specific research questions they have, and so some of those tools, they range from common tools that are already in use today on your personal computer, such as Python or R Bioconductor, and then they have more high performance computing tools, such as Hal or any kind of s3 environment, or Amazon services, and then on top of that I think what is so awesome about the platform is that it's very dynamic, so a tool that's needed to use for high performance computing or a tool that's needed even just as a on a smaller data set, that can easily be installed and may be available to researchers, and so that they can use it for their research. >> So kind of data as a service. I would love to know about the community itself. How are you guys sharing the results of kind of oh this process worked great for this type of analysis amongst your members? >> Yeah so I think that there's kind of two different targets in that sense that you can think of is that there's the researchers and the researchers that come to the platform and then there's actually the patient itself, and ultimately the HA's goal is to make, to use the data and use the researcher for patient centered care, so with the researchers specifically, we have a variety of tutorials available so that researchers can one, learn how to perform high performance computing analysis, see what other people have done. We have a forum where researchers can log on and enable, I guess access other researchers and talk to them about different analysis, and then additionally we have My Research Legacy, which is patient centered, so it's this is what's been found and this is what we can give back to you as the patient about your specific individualized treatment. >> What do you do on a daily basis? Take us through your job, are you writing code, are you slinging API's around? What are some of the things that you're doing? >> I think I might say all of the above. I think right now my main effort is focused on one, conducting research using the platform, so I do use the platform to answer my own research questions, and those we have presented at different conferences, for example the American Heart Association, we had a talk here about the precision medicine platform, and then two, I'm focused on strategically making the precision medicine platform better by getting more data, adding data to the platform, improving the way that data is harmonized in the platform, and improving the amount of data that we have, and the diversity, and the variety. >> Alright, we'll help you with that, so let's help you get some people recruited, so what do they got to do to volunteer, volunteer their data, because I think this is one of those things where you know people do want to help. So, how do they, how you onboard? You use the website, is it easy, one click? Do they have to wear an iWatch, I mean what I mean? >> Yeah. >> What's the deal? What do I got to do? >> So I think I would encourage researchers and scientists and anybody who is data centric to go to precision.heart.org, and they can just sign up for an account, they can contact us through that, there's plenty of different ways to get in touch with us and plenty of ways to help. >> Precision.heart.org. >> Yup, precision.heart.org. >> Stu: Register now. >> Register now click, >> Powered by AWS. >> Yup. >> Alright so I gotta ask you as an AWS customer, okay take your customer hat off, put your citizen's hat on, what is Amazon mean to you, I mean is it, how do you describe it to people who don't use it? >> Okay yeah, so I think... the HA's ultimate mission right, is to provide individualized treatment and cures for cardiovascular disease and stroke. Amazon is a way to enable that and make that actually happen so that we can mine extremely large data sets, identify those individualized patterns. It allows us to store data in a fashion where we can provide a market place where there's extremely large amounts of data, extremely diverse amounts of data, and data that can be processed effectively, so that it can be directly used for research. >> What's your favorite tool or product or service within Amazon? >> That's a good question. I think, I mean the cloud and s3 buckets are definitely in a sense they're my favorites because there's so much that can be stored right there, Athena I think is also pretty awesome, and then the EMR clusters with Spark. >> The list is too long. >> My jam. >> It is. (laughs) >> So, one of the interesting things that I love is a lot of my friends are in non-profits, fundraising is a big, big challenge, grants are again, a big challenge, have you guys seen any new opportunities as a result of the results of the research coming out of HA and AWS in the cloud? >> Yeah so I think one of the coolest things about the HA is that they have this Institute for Precision Cardiovascular Medicine, and the strategic partnership between the HA and AWS, even just this year we've launched 13 new grants, where the HA kind of backs the research behind, and the AWS provides credit so that people can come to the cloud and use the cloud and use the tools available on a grant funded basis. >> So tell me a little bit more about that program. Anybody specifically that you, kind of like saying, seeing that's used these credits from AWS to do some cool research? >> Yeah definitely, so I think specifically we have one grantee right now that is really focused on identifying outcomes across multiple clinical trials, so currently clinical trials take 20 years, and there's a large variety of them. I don't know if any of you are familiar with the Framingham heart study, the Dallas heart study, the Jackson heart study, and trying to determine how those trials compare, and what outcomes we can generate, and research insights we can generate across multiple data sets is something that's been challenging due to the ability to not being able to necessarily access that data, all of those different data sets together, and then two, trying to find ways to actually compare them, and so with the precision medicine platform, we have a grantee at the University of Colorado-Denver, who has been able to find those synchronicities across data sets and has actually created kind of a framework that then can be implemented in the precision medicine platform. >> Well I just registered, it takes really two seconds to register, that's cool. Thanks so much for pointing out precision.heart.org. Final question, you said EMR's your jam. (laughing) >> Why, why is it? Why do you like it so much, is it fast, is it easy to use? >> I think the speed is one of the things. When it comes to using genetic data and multiple biological levels of data, whether it be your genetics, your lifestyle, your environment factors, there's... it just ends up being extremely large amounts of data, and to be able to implement things like server-less AI, and artificial intelligence, and machine learning on that data set is time consuming, and having the power of an EMR cluster that is scalable makes that so much faster so that we can then answer our research questions faster and identify those insights and get them to out in the world. >> Gotta love the new services they're launching, too. It just builds on top of it. Doesn't it? >> Yes. >> Yeah, soon everyone's gonna be jamming on AWS in our opinion. Thanks so much for coming on, appreciate the stories and commentary. >> Yeah. >> Precision.heart.org, you want to volunteer if you're a researcher or a user, want to share your data, they've got a lot of data science mojo going on over there, so check it out. It's theCUBE bringing a lot of data here, tons of data from the show, three days of wall to wall coverage, we'll be back with more live coverage after this short break. (upbeat music)