How AI, data are transforming healthcare: three key trends that could change the face of medicine
- From pinpointing cancer treatments to marrying AI with smartphones and making tech more accessible, a health tech conference puts spotlight on some great ideas
- ‘We have taught machines to see what we can see. But it turns out that we also have taught machines to see things that we can’t see,’ a neuroscientist exclaims
Data and artificial intelligence are transforming the healthcare industry in many ways. The recent Stat Health Tech Summit, organised by the health publication Stat and held in San Francisco, California, and online dived into how technology is changing the face of medicine.
Below are three highlights from the event, concerning the use of AI to mesh patient data with genomic test information to help assess cancer treatment options, using AI with smartphones to potentially help patients to help themselves, and making technologies more accessible for those with disabilities.
How data aids cancer therapy
Billionaire businessman Eric Lefkofsky is a co-founder of Groupon, the US-based coupon discount e-commerce site, but he moved into health tech after his wife was diagnosed with cancer.
Lefkofsky founded his company Tempus in 2015, with the aim of aiding cancer patients’ treatment by developing AI software which could combine patient information from genomic tests with data from clinical records.
Lefkofsky used the knowledge he had amassed at Groupon about how to structure messy unstructured data – an AI term that means all data, not just numerical – to develop software that could better fit individual patients to suitable cancer therapies.
By extracting clinical data from medical records systems, and combining it with molecular data (concerning the sequencing of patients’ DNA) and bioinformatics (computer tools which interpret biological information), Tempus helps doctors assess which treatments are most suitable for a patient.