New York Times: Turning to Big, Big Data to See What Ails the World
Tina Rosenberg, author and former editorial writer for the New York Times

“…The Global Burden of Disease study is a single scientific project on a scale with the moon landing or mapping the human genome. It has been going for a quarter century and involves hundreds, perhaps thousands, of scientists. … This is big, big, big data. And it’s had an enormous impact. … The researchers in the Global Burden study got their information by combing through birth and death records and hospital files and doing household surveys. … Put together, this data allows policymakers to make better use of their scarce health resources by spending them on what’s most important…” (4/9).