Lifeboat Foundation

There’s a lot of excitement at the intersection of artificial intelligence and health care. AI has already been used to improve disease treatment and detection, discover promising new drugs, identify links between genes and diseases, and more.

By analyzing large datasets and finding patterns, virtually any new algorithm has the potential to help patients — AI researchers just need access to the right data to train and test those algorithms. Hospitals, understandably, are hesitant to share sensitive patient information with research teams. When they do share data, it’s difficult to verify that researchers are only using the data they need and deleting it after they’re done.

Secure AI Labs (SAIL) is addressing those problems with a technology that lets AI algorithms run on encrypted datasets that never leave the data owner’s system. Health care organizations can control how their datasets are used, while researchers can protect the confidentiality of their models and search queries. Neither party needs to see the data or the model to collaborate.

With almost instant improvement.

A team of researchers from the University of California, San Francisco Health has successfully treated a patient with severe depression by targeting the specific brain circuit involved in depressive brain patterns and resetting them thanks to a new proof-of-concept intervention.

Continue reading “A New Brain Implant Relieved Treatment-Resistant Depression, in a World First” »

Based on Transformers, our new architecture advances genetic research by improving the ability to predict how DNA sequence influences gene expression.

When the Human Genome Project succeeded in mapping the DNA sequence of the human genome, the international research community were excited by the opportunity to better understand the genetic instructions that influence human health and development. DNA carries the genetic information that determines everything from eye colour to susceptibility to certain diseases and disorders. The roughly 20,000 sections of DNA in the human body known as genes contain instructions about the amino acid sequence of proteins, which perform numerous essential functions in our cells. Yet these genes make up less than 2% of the genome. The remaining base pairs — which account for 98% of the 3 billion “letters” in the genome — are called “non-coding” and contain less well-understood instructions about when and where genes should be produced or expressed in the human body.

Human Factors, Ethical Artificial Intelligence, And Healthy Aging — Dr. Arathi Sethumadhavan, PhD, Head of User Research, AI, Ethics & Society, Microsoft Cloud+AI.

Dr. Arathi Sethumadhavan, Ph.D. is Head of User Research for AI, Ethics & Society, at Microsoft’s Cloud+AI organization, where she works at the intersection of user research, ethics, and product experience.

Continue reading “Dr. Arathi Sethumadhavan, PhD — Head of User Research, AI, Ethics & Society, Microsoft’s Cloud+AI” »

“In the preliminary data … there is a suspicion of an increased risk of heart inflammation, when vaccinated with Moderna,” the Danish Health Authority said in a statement.

It referred to data from a yet unpublished Nordic study, which would now be sent to the European Medicines Agency (EMA) for further assessment. Final data was expected within a month, it added.

Sweden and Denmark said they now recommended the Comirnaty vaccine, from Pfizer/BioNTech (PFE.N), 0 instead.

Microsoft has confirmed that its financial services-focused industry cloud will be officially available on November 1 2021.

The news comes eight months after the company revealed it was launching three new industry clouds this year — for manufacturing, not-for-profits, and financial services. Today’s announcement means the financial-focused cloud is the first of the three to receive an official launch date, though Microsoft has previously introduced an industry cloud for health care and its retail-focused incarnation currently sits in public preview.

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Driving this revolution has been a new breed and wave of founders and startups that merge the worlds of technology and bio — importantly, not just the old world of biotech (or a narrow definition of tech in bio as only “digital health”), but something much broader, bigger, and blending both worlds. In short, biology — enabled by technology — is eating the world. This has not only changed how we diagnose, treat, and manage disease, but has been changing the way we access, pay for, and deliver care in the healthcare system. It is now entering into manufacturing, food, and several other industries as well. Bio is becoming a part of everything.

This new era of industrialized bio — enabled by AI as well as an ongoing, foundational shift in biology from empirical science to more engineered approaches — will be the next industrial revolution in human history. And propelling it forward is an enormous new driving force, the novel coronavirus SARS-CoV-2, its ever-evolving strains, and the resulting COVID-19 disease pandemic and response — which I believe is analogous to our generation’s World War II (WW2). In other words: a massive global upheaval, but that later led to unprecedented innovation and significant new players.

Continue reading “The Coming Age for Tech x Bio: The ‘Industrial Bio Complex’” »

Sickle-cell disease is incurable and affects 15,000 people in the UK.

And the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence said the hope of reducing health inequalities for black people, who are predominantly affected and often have poorer health to start with, made the drug worth recommending.

It called it “an innovative treatment”.

Continue reading “First new treatment for sickle cell in 20 years” »

Image-guided radiation therapy has evolved to include the ability to track tumors in real time during treatment. It’s improving cure rates and limiting side effects for a growing number of cancer patients.

Think of it like radio making way for television. For more than a century, radiation therapy has been effective in treating cancer. From the first X-rays, to today’s computed tomography (CT) scans, physicians have relied on various imaging techniques to locate tumors and guide their treatment. Enter real-time tumor tracking.

“Magnetic Resonance-guided therapy is really a new paradigm,” said Dr. Rodney Ellis, chair of the Department of Radiation Oncology at Penn State Health Milton S. Hershey Medical Center. He notes the leading-edge technology merges MRI (Magnetic Resonance Imaging) with a linear accelerator, making it possible to reshape radiation dosage based on daily changes in a tumor’s shape, size and position and its surrounding healthy anatomy.