Tag: Artificial Intelligence

How Genome Sequencing Can Change Our Understanding of Illnesses …

In this series of blogs, I discuss recent technological innovations that will be shaping the future of healthcare. In this blog post, I will be discussing genome sequencing and the potential and the ways it can impact the medical field.

In genome sequencing, scientists collect a sample of your DNA and then determine the identity of the approximately 3 billion nucleotides that compose the human genome. The very first human genome was completely sequenced in 2003 as part of the Human Genome Project, which initially started in 1990. In present day, genomic sequencing technology has significantly improved and has become more efficient; a human genome now takes a few days to be completely sequenced.

Some of the work being done in genomic sequencing includes:

Personal genomics. This is a direct-to-consumer (DTC) approach, where companies send a kit to collect saliva from customers and then after some time send back an online report about the results. More and more companies are bringing the potential of genomic sequencing to the hand of consumers. Companies like 23andMe, Futura Genetics and Counsyl offer services that range from determining ancestral history and makeup to testing DNA for predisposition of most common diseases as well as tell wannabe parents whether they are at risk of having children with inherited diseases.

Pharmacogenomics, which studies the variability of drug response due to genetic code. Different people have different reactions to drugs and the idea here is to develop personalized drugs that will help in drug therapy. Different companies and startups are utilizing genome sequencing in order to help patients know how drugs works in their body and any side effects that might occur. This would usually be provided to physicians who will deal with patients directly.

Incorporation of artificial intelligence to mine tons of genetic information to further our understanding about diseases, diagnosis and treatment. Companies like Deep Genomics and IBM Watson are using A.I. to decode the gene and speed up the process of tailoring drug recommendations for different patients.

In summary, genomic information can be used to study trends in the human genome to help us understand causes of health and disease and use that for future detection of illnesses. To put it simply, this would allow use to detect thousands of individual conditions at an earlier stage rather than waiting until they become clinically apparent. We are still in the early stages of this field, thus a significant amount of investment and resources need to be committed to advance it.

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Healthcare Wearables and Sensors

In this series of blogs, I discuss recent technological innovations that will be shaping the future of healthcare. In this blog post, I will be discussing healthcare trackers, wearables, and sensors, as well as the potential they have in tracking sleep patterns, managing stress levels and weight.

The future of medicine will be focused on providing personalized care through technological mediums like health trackers, wearables and sensors. These devices will be used to collect data from the patients and optimize their use to the benefit of the patient.

Some ways of how healthcare wearables, trackers and sensors are impacting health include:

Managing weight, improving fitness, and increasing energetic state. Existing devices like the Fitbit Surge can monitor heart rate; track steps, distance, and calories burnt; monitor sleeping patterns. Collected data can be used to figure out trends in an individual’s life and use it to improve health. Physicians can use data to study patterns and detect any health abnormalities.

Enhance meditation using the personal meditation assistant Muse headband. The Muse headband measures brain signals much like a heart monitor measures heart rate. Based on real-time signals collected from the brain, it guides the individual’s meditation through changing sounds of weather. This allows the brain to reach a deeper sense of focus and reduce symptoms associated with stress, depression and anxiety as well as improved focus, performance and quality of life.

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In the age of personalized computing, it only makes sense to create a personalized health monitoring on the go. With more people increasingly using smartphones, it has become ever so easier to create a platform that can track an individual’s health 24/7 and that time is now!

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Artificial Intelligence in Healthcare

In this series of blogs, I discuss some of the most impressive technological innovations that will be shaping the future of healthcare. In this blog post, I will be discussing artificial intelligence and the potential it has in reshaping medical education, patient recovery, and performing surgeries.

No one doubts that artificial intelligence has unimaginable potential. Within the next couple of years, it will revolutionize every area of our life, including medicine. Artificial intelligence has the potential to redesign healthcare completely. AI algorithms are able to mine medical records, design treatment plans or create drugs way faster than any current actor on the healthcare palette, as well as interpret medical images faster and more accurately than medical professionals. It also has the potential to assist repetitive, monotonous jobs, so physicians and nurses can concentrate on their actual jobs instead.

Some ways that artificial intelligence will impact healthcare include:

Mining medical records, especially in the age of big data, is a field that is gaining more attention. Recently, the AI research branch of Google launched its Google Deepmind Health project, which is used to mine medical records in order to provide better and faster health services. Google Deepmind is capable of processing hundreds of thousands of medical information within minutes.

Predicting whether patients will be readmitted into care in the future. Careskore, a startup out of Chicago, is a cloud based analytics platform for physicians and health institutions. The platform uses clinical, labs, demographic and behavioural data to predict in real time how likely a patient will be readmitted to a hospital. This can improve quality of care provided at hospitals as well as provide patients with a clearer picture about their state of health.

Interpret medical images in a matter of milliseconds – up to 10,000 times faster than an average radiologist. Enlitic is a startup that uses the power of deep learning technologies, specifically its prowess at certain forms of image recognition to harvest the data stemming from radiology images and applying it in unique medical cases. According to a report by The Economist, Enlitic’s platform was 50% better at classifying malignant tumours and had a flase-negative rate of zero in comparison to 7% for humans.

Speeding up the process of drug development and making it more cost-effective. Atomwise, a start up out of San Francisco uses supercomputers that root out therapies from a database of molecular structures. Last year, they launched a virtual search for safe, existing medicines that could be redesigned to treat the Ebola virus. They found two drugs predicted by the company’s AI technology, which may significantly reduce Ebola infectivity. Imagine what horizons open for humanity if early utilization of AI results in such amazing discoveries!

In the age of Big Data, it is no question how valuable patient data is and what can be done with it. And that is why many institutions and companies are investing in data mining, analytics, and deep learning. Artificial intelligence truly has the potential to completely redesign the healthcare system as we know it, it will be interesting to see what the next decade will bring.

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