Fern Halper, PhD: Data, AI, and Its Promise for People With Lung Cancer

Fern Halper, PhD, vice president and senior director of TDWI Research and GO2 board member

Fern Halper, PhD has a lifelong passion for data. She has spent more than a decade collecting, managing, and analyzing large amounts of data for a Fortune 500 company and another two decades leading industry analyst teams focused on data and analytics technologies. Bringing this background to GO2 for Lung Cancer as a board member, it is no surprise she is excited to provide insights on how researchers can collaborate to find patterns in data to improve patient outcomes.  

Currently, Fern is vice president and senior director of TDWI Research for advanced analytics. She is well-known in the analytics community and has hundreds of publications on data mining and information technology. She focuses on advanced analytics, including predictive analytics, machine learning, text analytics, and big data analytics approaches. Halper is also co-author of several educational books on cloud computing and big data. 

She is a visionary who can see how AI and big data can revolutionize lung cancer care, including early detection, precision medicine, treatment discovery, and community building and support.  

“Healthcare historically has lagged behind other industries in using data and analytics,” Fern said. “This is an exciting time in healthcare. The industry is using AI and advanced algorithms to identify diseases.” 

Stigma is real 

Fern is no stranger to lung cancer. Both of her parents died from the disease. Her identical twin sister is GO2’s board chair and has been involved with GO2 for more than 15 years.   

“I am excited by GO2’s vision of trying to eradicate lung cancer,” Fern said. 

Fern has experienced the stigma of lung cancer firsthand. While her father was a person who smoked, her mother quit in her 20s.  

“People want to blame my father’s smoking for my mother’s death because of secondhand smoke,” she said. “Destigmatizing lung cancer is important. Breaking the taboo associated with lung cancer is something I would like to see in my lifetime.”  

Young women: looking at the data 

Lung cancer is the leading cause of cancer death among women in the United States and the number of young women with lung cancer who never smoked continues to rise. GO2 has a long history of advocating for more research on why lung cancer affects women differently than men.  

Fern sees promise to find answers to the questions about women and lung cancer diagnosis by examining data and drawing conclusions.  

“If you can analyze the characteristics of young women diagnosed and find patterns in the data, we can predict why certain people are getting lung cancer,” she said. “There are thousands and thousands of people with data that could be analyzed. Correlation does not mean causation – but it could be a starting point.”