Artificial Intelligence Needs Doctors As Much As They Need It
The media loves to hype concerns about artificial intelligence: What if machines become super-intelligent and self-aware? How will humanity compete and survive? But artificial intelligence today is a far cry from a robot takeover. "AI" is a catch-all term that often refers to machine training or machine learning: There is an abundance of data, vastly more than the human mind can assimilate, being tagged, captured and stored. This systematic data processing requires methodologies that can put it in usable form and formats. While these new developments stoke fear in some corners, the ability to predict outcomes is generally seen as a good thing, as it can mitigate risks and even save lives.
We, collectively, want AI even though it is seldom expressed this way.
The prospects and attempts toward artificial intelligence has been with us for decades. Only recently have the underlying technologies and infrastructure--including computer processing, storage, networking speed and advanced software platforms--become omnipresent. These technological advances enabled the implementation of data mining concepts and the subsequent advantages that were not feasible just a decade ago.
AI is fantastical by vision, evolutionary by experience, and disruptive upon reflection. In the world of health care, AI is already transforming research and clinical practice. We, collectively, want AI even though it is seldom expressed this way. What we, the patient population, patient advocates and caregivers, agree on and want is: (1) timely, precise and inexpensive diagnoses of our ailments, injuries and disorders; (2) timely, personalized, highly effective and efficient courses of therapies; and (3) expedited recovery with minimum deficits, complications and recurrence.
"Artificial intelligence and machine learning will impact healthcare as profoundly as the discovery of the microscope."
Implicitly, we all are saying that we want our healthcare systems and clinicians to accomplish truly inhuman feats: to incorporate all sources of structured data (such as published statistics and reports) and unstructured data (including news articles, conversational analysis by care givers, nuances of similar cases, talks at professional societies); to analyze the data sourced and uncover patterns, reveal side effects, define probable success and outcomes; and to present the best personalized course of treatment for the patient that addresses the ailment and mitigates associated risks. It is hard to argue against any of this.
In a recent published interview, Keith J. Dreyer, executive director of the Massachusetts General Hospital and Brigham and Women's Hospital Center for Clinical Data Science, says that "artificial intelligence and machine learning will impact healthcare as profoundly as the discovery of the microscope."
But as AI helps physicians in profound ways, like detecting subtle lesions on scans or distinguishing the symptoms of a stroke from a brain tumor, we humans can't get too complacent. Evolving AI platforms will provide more sophisticated sets of "tools" to address both mundane and complex medical challenges, albeit with humans very much in the mix and routinely at the helm.
Humans do not appear endangered to be replaced anytime soon.
Human beings are capable of a level of nuance and contextual understanding of complex medical scenarios and, consequently, do not appear endangered to be replaced anytime soon. These platforms will do some heavy lifting for sure and provide considerable assistance across the healthcare industry. But human involvement is crucial, as we are best at adaptive learning, cognition, ensuring accuracy of the data, and continually providing feedback to improve the machine learning components of the AI platforms that the health industry will increasingly rely upon.
The human/machine interface is not binary; there is no line in the sand. It is fuzzy and evolutionary, a synchronicity that we all will surely witness and experience. In the future, it may be possible that all recorded knowledge, including genetic, genomic and laboratory data, from structured and unstructured sources, can be at the fingertips of your clinician, and then factored into diagnosing your condition and prescribing your course of treatment. This is precision and personalized medicine on a grand scale applied at the micro level--you!
But none of this will diminish the importance of doctors, nurses and all assortment of care providers. Though they all will undoubtedly become more effective with such awesome AI assistance, their job will always be to heal you with compassion, wisdom, and kindness, for the essence of humanity cannot be automated.
After his grandmother’s dementia diagnosis, one man invented a snack to keep her healthy and hydrated.
On a visit to his grandmother’s nursing home in 2016, college student Lewis Hornby made a shocking discovery: Dehydration is a common (and dangerous) problem among seniors—especially those that are diagnosed with dementia.
Hornby’s grandmother, Pat, had always had difficulty keeping up her water intake as she got older, a common issue with seniors. As we age, our body composition changes, and we naturally hold less water than younger adults or children, so it’s easier to become dehydrated quickly if those fluids aren’t replenished. What’s more, our thirst signals diminish naturally as we age as well—meaning our body is not as good as it once was in letting us know that we need to rehydrate. This often creates a perfect storm that commonly leads to dehydration. In Pat’s case, her dehydration was so severe she nearly died.
When Lewis Hornby visited his grandmother at her nursing home afterward, he learned that dehydration especially affects people with dementia, as they often don’t feel thirst cues at all, or may not recognize how to use cups correctly. But while dementia patients often don’t remember to drink water, it seemed to Hornby that they had less problem remembering to eat, particularly candy.
Where people with dementia often forget to drink water, they're more likely to pick up a colorful snack, Hornby found. alzheimers.org.uk
Hornby wanted to create a solution for elderly people who struggled keeping their fluid intake up. He spent the next eighteen months researching and designing a solution and securing funding for his project. In 2019, Hornby won a sizable grant from the Alzheimer’s Society, a UK-based care and research charity for people with dementia and their caregivers. Together, through the charity’s Accelerator Program, they created a bite-sized, sugar-free, edible jelly drop that looked and tasted like candy. The candy, called Jelly Drops, contained 95% water and electrolytes—important minerals that are often lost during dehydration. The final product launched in 2020—and was an immediate success. The drops were able to provide extra hydration to the elderly, as well as help keep dementia patients safe, since dehydration commonly leads to confusion, hospitalization, and sometimes even death.
Not only did Jelly Drops quickly become a favorite snack among dementia patients in the UK, but they were able to provide an additional boost of hydration to hospital workers during the pandemic. In NHS coronavirus hospital wards, patients infected with the virus were regularly given Jelly Drops to keep their fluid levels normal—and staff members snacked on them as well, since long shifts and personal protective equipment (PPE) they were required to wear often left them feeling parched.
In April 2022, Jelly Drops launched in the United States. The company continues to donate 1% of its profits to help fund Alzheimer’s research.
Last week, researchers at the University of Oxford announced that they have received funding to create a brand new way of preventing ovarian cancer: A vaccine. The vaccine, known as OvarianVax, will teach the immune system to recognize and destroy mutated cells—one of the earliest indicators of ovarian cancer.
Understanding Ovarian Cancer
Despite advancements in medical research and treatment protocols over the last few decades, ovarian cancer still poses a significant threat to women’s health. In the United States alone, more than 12,0000 women die of ovarian cancer each year, and only about half of women diagnosed with ovarian cancer survive five or more years past diagnosis. Unlike cervical cancer, there is no routine screening for ovarian cancer, so it often goes undetected until it has reached advanced stages. Additionally, the primary symptoms of ovarian cancer—frequent urination, bloating, loss of appetite, and abdominal pain—can often be mistaken for other non-cancerous conditions, delaying treatment.
An American woman has roughly a one percent chance of developing ovarian cancer throughout her lifetime. However, these odds increase significantly if she has inherited mutations in the BRCA1 or BRCA2 genes. Women who carry these mutations face a 46% lifetime risk for ovarian and breast cancers.
An Unlikely Solution
To address this escalating health concern, the organization Cancer Research UK has invested £600,000 over the next three years in research aimed at creating a vaccine, which would destroy cancerous cells before they have a chance to develop any further.
Researchers at the University of Oxford are at the forefront of this initiative. With funding from Cancer Research UK, scientists will use tissue samples from the ovaries and fallopian tubes of patients currently battling ovarian cancer. Using these samples, University of Oxford scientists will create a vaccine to recognize certain proteins on the surface of ovarian cancer cells known as tumor-associated antigens. The vaccine will then train that person’s immune system to recognize the cancer markers and destroy them.
The next step
Once developed, the vaccine will first be tested in patients with the disease, to see if their ovarian tumors will shrink or disappear. Then, the vaccine will be tested in women with the BRCA1 or BRCA2 mutations as well as women in the general population without genetic mutations, to see whether the vaccine can prevent the cancer altogether.
While the vaccine still has “a long way to go,” according to Professor Ahmed Ahmed, Director of Oxford University’s ovarian cancer cell laboratory, he is “optimistic” about the results.
“We need better strategies to prevent ovarian cancer,” said Ahmed in a press release from the University of Oxford. “Currently, women with BRCA1/2 mutations are offered surgery which prevents cancer but robs them of the chance to have children afterward.
Teaching the immune system to recognize the very early signs of cancer is a tough challenge. But we now have highly sophisticated tools which give us real insights into how the immune system recognizes ovarian cancer. OvarianVax could offer the solution.”