Viewpoint: Addressing Medicine’s Dark Matter (Preprint)

UNSTRUCTURED In the 20th century, models used to predict the motion of heavenly bodies did not match observation. Investigating this incongruity led to the discovery of dark matter - the most abundant substance in the universe. Despite decades of dedication to data collection, healthcare prediction models similarly fail to predict real-world behaviors accurately. This could result from the fact that even the largest data sets only collect information from a fraction of the population, leaving large swaths unrepresented and further limiting progress on healthcare quality. What might medicine learn from what it cannot see?