title: Cancer-disease associations: A visualization and animation through medical big data.
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  Cancer is the primary disease responsible for death and disability worldwide. Currently, prevention and early detection represents the best hope for cure. Knowing the expected diseases that occur with a particular cancer in advance could lead to physicians being able to better tailor their treatment for cancer. The aim of this study was to build an animated visualization tool called as Cancer Associations Map Animation (CAMA), to chart the association of cancers with other disease over time.
  
  
  METHODS
  The study population was collected from the Taiwan National Health Insurance Database during the period January 2000 to December 2002, 782 million outpatient visits were used to compute the associations of nine major cancers with other diseases. A motion chart was used to quantify and visualize the associations between diseases and cancers.
  
  
  RESULTS
  The CAMA motion chart that was built successfully facilitated the observation of cancer-disease associations across ages and genders. The CAMA system can be accessed online at http://203.71.86.98/web/runq16.html.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  The CAMA animation system is an animated medical data visualization tool which provides a dynamic, time-lapse, animated view of cancer-disease associations across different age groups and gender. Derived from a large, nationwide healthcare dataset, this exploratory data analysis tool can detect cancer comorbidities earlier than is possible by manual inspection. Taking into account the trajectory of cancer-specific comorbidity development may facilitate clinicians and healthcare researchers to more efficiently explore early stage hypotheses, develop new cancer treatment approaches, and identify potential effect modifiers or new risk factors associated with specific cancers.
authors.affiliation: Graduate of Biomedical Informatics, College of Medical Science and Technology, Taipei Medical University, Taiwan; International Center for Health Information Technology (ICHIT), Taipei Medical University, Taiwan.
authors.forename: Usman
authors.initials: U
authors.lastname: Iqbal
authors.affiliation: Graduate of Biomedical Informatics, College of Medical Science and Technology, Taipei Medical University, Taiwan; International Center for Health Information Technology (ICHIT), Taipei Medical University, Taiwan.
authors.forename: Chun-Kung
authors.initials: CK
authors.lastname: Hsu
authors.affiliation: Graduate of Biomedical Informatics, College of Medical Science and Technology, Taipei Medical University, Taiwan; International Center for Health Information Technology (ICHIT), Taipei Medical University, Taiwan.
authors.forename: Phung Anh Alex
authors.initials: PA
authors.lastname: Nguyen
authors.affiliation: Graduate of Biomedical Informatics, College of Medical Science and Technology, Taipei Medical University, Taiwan; International Center for Health Information Technology (ICHIT), Taipei Medical University, Taiwan.
authors.forename: Daniel Livius
authors.initials: DL
authors.lastname: Clinciu
authors.affiliation: Graduate of Biomedical Informatics, College of Medical Science and Technology, Taipei Medical University, Taiwan; International Center for Health Information Technology (ICHIT), Taipei Medical University, Taiwan.
authors.forename: Richard
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Lu
authors.affiliation: Graduate of Biomedical Informatics, College of Medical Science and Technology, Taipei Medical University, Taiwan; International Center for Health Information Technology (ICHIT), Taipei Medical University, Taiwan.
authors.forename: Shabbir
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Syed-Abdul
authors.affiliation: Graduate of Biomedical Informatics, College of Medical Science and Technology, Taipei Medical University, Taiwan; International Center for Health Information Technology (ICHIT), Taipei Medical University, Taiwan; Institute of Biomedical Informatics, National Yang Ming University, Taiwan.
authors.forename: Hsuan-Chia
authors.initials: HC
authors.lastname: Yang
authors.affiliation: Graduate of Biomedical Informatics, College of Medical Science and Technology, Taipei Medical University, Taiwan.
authors.forename: Yao-Chin
authors.initials: YC
authors.lastname: Wang
authors.affiliation: Graduate of Biomedical Informatics, College of Medical Science and Technology, Taipei Medical University, Taiwan.
authors.forename: Chu-Ya
authors.initials: CY
authors.lastname: Huang
authors.affiliation: Graduate of Biomedical Informatics, College of Medical Science and Technology, Taipei Medical University, Taiwan; International Center for Health Information Technology (ICHIT), Taipei Medical University, Taiwan.
authors.forename: Chih-Wei
authors.initials: CW
authors.lastname: Huang
authors.affiliation: Graduate of Biomedical Informatics, College of Medical Science and Technology, Taipei Medical University, Taiwan.
authors.forename: Yo-Cheng
authors.initials: YC
authors.lastname: Chang
authors.affiliation: Graduate of Biomedical Informatics, College of Medical Science and Technology, Taipei Medical University, Taiwan; International Center for Health Information Technology (ICHIT), Taipei Medical University, Taiwan; Bureau of International Cooperation, Ministry of Health and Welfare, Taipei, Taiwan.
authors.forename: Min-Huei
authors.initials: MH
authors.lastname: Hsu
authors.affiliation: Graduate of Biomedical Informatics, College of Medical Science and Technology, Taipei Medical University, Taiwan; International Center for Health Information Technology (ICHIT), Taipei Medical University, Taiwan; School of Health Care Administration, Taipei Medical University, Taipei, Taiwan; Faculty of Health Sciences, Macau University of Science and Technology, Macau, China.
authors.forename: Wen-Shan
authors.initials: WS
authors.lastname: Jian
authors.affiliation: Graduate of Biomedical Informatics, College of Medical Science and Technology, Taipei Medical University, Taiwan; International Center for Health Information Technology (ICHIT), Taipei Medical University, Taiwan; Department of Dermatology, Taipei Medical University - Wan Fang Hospital, Taipei, Taiwan. Electronic address: jaak88@gmail.com.
authors.forename: Yu-Chuan Jack
authors.initials: YC
authors.lastname: Li
mesh_terms: D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D009369:Neoplasms / Q000150:complications*; D013624:Taiwan
keywords: Big data visualization; Cancer comorbidities visualization; Cancer disease visualization; Disease visualization; Visual analytics