BY LINKING worldwide databases through an intelligent computer system, researchers here hope to come up with a treasure trove of information which can be mined to prevent the next terrorist attack or financial crisis.
A renowned United States university is partnering the Agency for Science, Technology and Research (A*Star) to start a US$50 million (S$75 million) research centre to build this data mining system.
It is the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign's first research facility outside the US and a prestigious tie-up for A*Star. Already, about 7,200 applications from all over the world have been received for the handful of research positions available.
At the launch of the Human Sixth Sense Programme yesterday, Senior Minister of State (Trade and Industry) S. Iswaran, who was the guest of honour, said the 'business opportunities arising from breakthroughs will be enormous'.
Referring to the softening economy, he said it was important to 'look beyond short-term challenges' and continue to invest in 'our long-term competitiveness'.
The US college - whose alumni include Javed Karim and Steve Chen, who created video-sharing website YouTube, and Max Levchin of payment gateway PayPal - yesterday said the system would be global in scale and intuitive in nature.
A doctor who needs information to treat a patient suffering a rare cancer, for instance, can tap medical journals, hospital records and even insurance records to find out what can be done, which hospital has most experience at treating it, if there are experimental drugs being tested, and how much treatment may cost.
All he would have to do is query a computer system, which gives the user an almost instantaneous 'background check' on the options available to him.
Policymakers could gain an overall view of a population's job status and earnings, from databases kept by companies or the tax authorities. Or, parents could instantly compare their children's performance with, say, the national average.
Some of this information and data mining is available on a small scale or in research labs, but the new Advanced Digital Sciences Centre is aiming for a global system. It should be as seamless and intelligent as a person's own 'sixth sense', university officials said.
The centre's new director, Professor Benjamin Wah, a research professor from the university's coordinated science laboratory, said he hoped to show results in two years.
This is the first large-scale project between the university and Singapore, and the centre will be located at Fusionopolis.
The university's chancellor, Dr Richard Herman, said 'sustaining the excitement' and faculty visits would be a challenge in the long term.
Another challenge would be privacy issues, said the head of data mining at A*Star, Dr Ng See-Kiong. To get around that, the team would need to 'look at trends in the data, and not on an individual basis', he added.
