Technology That Rocks

In the face of the seemingly ever-growing set of challenges facing the global community, there are positive and encouraging news out of science & tech that give hope for a brighter future for all.

Two really exciting advances in healthcare technology, that I think are signs of monumental advances for medical care, are these following two stories that came out this January 2020:

https://www.healthimaging.com/topics/healthcare-economics/fda-clear-worlds-first-portable-mri

https://www.statnews.com/2020/02/20/machine-learning-finds-novel-antibiotic-able-to-kill-superbugs/

Despite the sometimes exaggerated expectations of the potential applications of AI in everyday life and work in the past 10 years, there are a few elements within the domain that continue to show promise with advances made by researchers and industry fairly regularly. One of those is Computer Vision (CV), which is fundamental to a number of technologies with practical uses, like Augmented Reality. As with applications of other areas of AI, the most practical here is decision support.

Below is a great article on the team and vision at Paige, which is using CV for medical imaging purposes:

https://venturebeat.com/2019/12/18/paige-raises-45-million-to-detect-cancer-with-computer-vision/

Great write-up that takes a more rational stance on the potential wins from broader adoption of AI / machine learning. I’ve been borrowing the term “augmented intelligence” when describing the (hyped up in recent years) acronym of “AI”. The algorithms that sift through large amounts of historical data, and then try to make suggestions on data that’s input to the model by the end-user — are most effective at suggesting the next step / action for the human — rather than replacing people’s decisions entirely. This will be especially evident in healthcare, where doctor / clinician decisions will never be replaced, but rather only augmented by output from systems.

https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/does-ai-have-a-place-in-medicine/

Highly recommended read on the application of deep learning to the dermatology arena, that a research team at Google has pursued. This is what I believe to be the promise next generation of health tech start-ups and emerging companies - where curation can be sourced globally.

https://ai.googleblog.com/2019/09/using-deep-learning-to-inform.html

The interesting bit is that a new Netflix original series, “Diagnosis” has come out about the same time (this month, Sept 2019) and covers specific stories where crowdsourcing has led to positive next steps for patients and their families.

https://www.netflix.com/title/80201543

An area worth exploring further.