As we explore various tools and techniques, I've talked to people in industries outside of healthcare.
Palantir Technologies provides tools for analyzing, integrating, and visualizing data of all kinds, including structured, unstructured, relational, temporal, and geospatial. It has traditionally has focused on government, providing such functions as
Intelligence
Defense
Regulation and Oversight
Cyber Security
and financial data exploration/visualization for analysts and traders.
Here's a cool example of its use to analyze subprime mortgages.
Here's another example of its use with the Medicare cost data sets.
Edward Tufte has emphasized the need for creative visualizations to turn data into information, knowledge and wisdom.
Palantir's histogram and mapping tools do that nicely.
A business intelligence application that assembles disparate data sources and presents unique visualizations that empower analytic exploration. That's cool!