Question: NARCOMS Database to Aid MS Victims

Multiple sclerosis (MS) causes a disruption in the transmission of nerve signals between the brain, spinal cord, and the rest of the body. Disrupted nerve signals cause the symptoms of MS, which can vary from one person to another, but often include difficulty walking, dizziness, fatigue, involuntary muscle spasms, pain, stiffness, tremors, vision problems, and weakness.

The North American Registry for Care and Research in Multiple Sclerosis (NARCOMS) is a database created to capture the real-life experiences of people living with MS. The database contains information about each patient's symptoms and their severity over time, medications taken, and courses of treatment. Physicians, scientists, and pharmaceutical companies can use this data to better understand MS by tracking patients' disease course, comparing results of alternative courses of treatment, measuring the effectiveness of medications, and identifying useful indicators of the severity of the disease.22Anyone with a diagnosis of MS can participate in NARCOMS and contribute to its research studies. Participants are asked to fill out an initial enrollment questionnaire and then complete surveys twice a year. Although roughly 400,000 people in the United States have been diagnosed with MS, fewer than 40,000 have elected to participate. More participants are needed in order for the database to be fully representative of people living with MS.23

Review Questions

1. Identify the fundamental hardware components that are likely included in the NARCOMS system.

2. Assume that a record for each participant in the NARCOMS database contains between 200 and 500 bytes of data. What is the maximum size of the database in gigabytes for the total 100,000 target number of participants? Would NARCOMS qualify as a big data project?

Critical Thinking Questions

You are a member of a highly successful advertising agency whose CEO suffers from MS. She has asked you to develop a proposal for the National Multiple Sclerosis Society to increase the number of participants in NARCRMS to 100,000 people within 12 months. There will be no charge to the society for this work, but the CEO has set a budget of $2 million. She has asked your full-time effort for the next year to lead this effort to success.

1. Identify three strong reasons why some MS victims might elect to participate in NARCOMS while most do not.

2. Outline a course of action that you think would successfully increase the number of NARCOMS participants by 60,000 over the next 12 months.