Artificial Intelligence is getting better than humans at detecting breast cancer

Artificial Intelligence is getting better than humans at detecting breast cancer

A recent study in The Lancet Oncology showed that AI found 20 percent more cancers on mammogram screens than radiologists alone.

The Lancet Oncology

Since the early 2000s, AI systems have eliminated more than 1.7 million jobs, and that number will only increase as AI improves. Some research estimates that by 2025, AI will eliminate more than 85 million jobs.

But for all the talk about job security, AI is also proving to be a powerful tool in healthcare—specifically, cancer detection. One recently published study has shown that, remarkably, artificial intelligence was able to detect 20 percent more cancers in imaging scans than radiologists alone.

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Sarah Watts

Sarah Watts is a health and science writer based in Chicago.

Drugs That Trick Older People’s Bodies to Behave Younger Might Boost the Effectiveness of a COVID-19 Vaccine

Because vaccination may be less effective in older people, it is imperative to test now whether immune boosters could help the efficacy of a COVID-19 vaccine in the elderly.

(© thodonal/Adobe)

In our April 23rd editorial for this magazine, we argued that addressing the COVID-19 pandemic requires that we both fight the SARS-CoV-2 virus and fortify the human hosts who are most vulnerable to it.

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Jamie Metzl And Nir Barzilai
Jamie Metzl is a member of the World Health Organization international advisory committee on human genome editing, a Singularity University Exponential Medicine faculty member, and the author of Hacking Darwin: Genetic Engineering and the Future of Humanity (paperback release April 7). @jamiemetzl. Nir Barzilai is a Professor of Medicine and Genetics and the Director of the Institute for Aging research at Albert Einstein College of Medicine, the Scientific Director of the American Federation for Aging Research and the author of Age Later: Healthspan, Lifespan, and the New Science of Longevity (June 2020). Dr. Nir Barzilai is the director of the Institute for Aging Research at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine and the Director of the Paul F. Glenn Center for the Biology of Human Aging Research and of the National Institutes of Health’s (NIH) Nathan Shock Centers of Excellence in the Basic Biology of Aging. He is the Ingeborg and Ira Leon Rennert Chair of Aging Research, professor in the Departments of Medicine and Genetics, and member of the Diabetes Research Center and of the Divisions of Endocrinology & Diabetes and Geriatrics. Dr. Barzilai’s research interests are in the biology and genetics of aging.
How We Can Return to Normal Life in the COVID-19 Era

A crowded baseball stadium is the epitome of "getting back to normal."

(© terovesalainen/Adobe)

I was asked recently when life might return to normal. The question is simple but the answer is complex, with many knowns, lots of known unknowns, and some unknown unknowns. But I'll give it my best shot.

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Robert M. Wachter, Md
Robert M. Wachter, MD is Professor and Chair of the Department of Medicine at the University of California, San Francisco, where he is the Holly Smith Distinguished Professor in Science and Medicine and the Benioff Endowed Chair in Hospital Medicine. The department leads the nation in NIH grants and is generally ranked as one of the nation’s best. Wachter is author of 250 articles and 6 books and is a frequent contributor to the New York Times and Wall Street Journal. He coined the term “hospitalist” in 1996 and is often considered the “father” of the hospitalist field, the fastest growing specialty in the history of modern medicine. He is past president of the Society of Hospital Medicine and past chair of the American Board of Internal Medicine. In the safety and quality arenas, he has written two books on the subject, including Understanding Patient Safety, the world’s top selling safety primer. In 2004, he received the John M. Eisenberg Award, the nation’s top honor in patient safety. Thirteen times, Modern Healthcare magazine has ranked him as one of the 50 most influential physician-executives in the U.S.; he was #1 on the list in 2015. His 2015 book, The Digital Doctor: Hope, Hype and Harm at the Dawn of Medicine’s Computer Age, was a New York Times science bestseller. In 2016, he chaired a blue-ribbon commission advising England’s National Health Service on its digital strategy. In 2020, his frequent tweets on Covid-19 were viewed over 50 million times by more than 100,000 followers and serve as a trusted source of information on the clinical, public health, and policy issues surrounding the pandemic.