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Category: health – Page 213

Biodiversity conservation, public health and improved livelihoods — dr gladys kalema-zikusoka, founder and CEO, conservation through public health.

Dr. Gladys Kalema-Zikusoka, is the Founder and CEO of Conservation Through Public Health (CTPH — https://ctph.org/), a 16-year old non-profit organization, based in Uganda, that promotes conservation by improving the quality of life of people and wildlife to enable them to coexist in and around protected areas in Africa, and she has become one of the leading conservationists and scientists working to save the critically endangered mountain gorillas of East Africa.

Dr. Kalema-Zikusoka is also on the Scientific Advisory Group for the Origins of Novel Pathogens (SAGO) of the World Health Organization (https://www.who.int/groups/scientific-advisory-group-on-the-…ago)/about)

Dr. Kalema-Zikusoka trained as a veterinarian at the University of London’s Royal Veterinary College. Between 1996 and 2000, she set up the first Veterinary Unit at the Uganda Wildlife Authority. From 2000 to 2003, she completed a zoological medicine residency and masters in specialized veterinary medicine at North Carolina State University and North Carolina Zoological Park.

Dr. Kalema-Zikusoka became an Ashoka Fellow in 2007 for merging Uganda’s wildlife management and rural public health programs to create common resources for both people and animals.

Continue reading “Dr. Gladys Kalema-Zikusoka, Founder and CEO, Conservation Through Public Health (CTPH), Uganda” | >

Bridging Technology And Medicine For The Modern Healthcare Ecosystem — Dr. Mona G. Flores, MD, Global Head of Medical AI, NVIDIA.

Dr. Mona Flores M.D., is the Global Head of Medical AI, at NVIDIA (https://blogs.nvidia.com/blog/author/monaflores/), the American multinational technology company, where she oversees the company’s AI initiatives in medicine and healthcare to bridge the chasm between technology and medicine.

Dr. Flores first joined NVIDIA in 2018 with a focus on developing their healthcare ecosystem. Before joining NVIDIA, she served as the chief medical officer of digital health company Human-Resolution Technologies after a 25+ year career in medicine and cardiothoracic surgery.

Dr. Flores received her medical degree from Oregon Health and Science University, followed by a general surgery residency at the University of California at San Diego, a Postdoctoral Fellowship at Stanford, and a cardiothoracic surgery residency and fellowship at Columbia University in New York.

Dr. Flores also has a Masters of Biology from San Jose State and an MBA from the University at Albany School of Business. She initially worked in investment banking for a few years before pursuing her passion for medicine and technology.

Continue reading “Dr. Mona Flores, M.D., Global Head of Medical AI, NVIDIA — Bridging Technology And Medicine” | >

U.S. health officials on Wednesday reported the country’s first case of the Omicron variant of the coronavirus, in a person in California.

The Covid-19 case was identified by the California and San Francisco health departments in a person who had traveled to South Africa and returned on Nov. 22, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said in a release. The individual, who was fully vaccinated with the Moderna shot but had not received a booster, had mild symptoms and has since recovered, federal and local officials said. The person has been isolating since testing positive on Nov. 29. All close contacts have tested negative thus far.

The discovery of Omicron in the United States is not a surprise. Upon characterizing the mutations in the variant, scientists in South Africa last week quickly raised the world’s alarms about the potential threat it posed, but it had already started to circulate silently. Some two dozen countries, from the United Kingdom to Australia to Israel, have already reported cases, many in travelers.

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NASA and the U.S. Dept. of Energy have come together to solicit design proposals for a nuclear reactor that will power Lunar and Martian exploration!

Over the next fifteen years, multiple space agencies and their commercial partners intend to mount crewed missions to the Moon and Mars. In addition to placing “footprints and flags” on these celestial bodies, there are plans to establish the infrastructure to allow for a long-term human presence. To meet these mission requirements and ensure astronaut safety, several technologies are currently being researched and developed.

At their core, these technologies are all about achieving self-sufficiency in terms of resources, materials, and energy. To ensure that these missions have all the energy they need to conduct operations, NASA is developing a Fission Surface Power (FSP) system that will provide a safe, efficient, and reliable electricity supply. In conjunction with solar cells, batteries, and fuel cells, this technology will allow for long-term missions to the Moon and Mars in the near future.

For NASA, having fission reactors for lunar surface operations is a vital part of the Artemis Program, which aims to create a program of “sustained lunar exploration.” This means infrastructure is required, like the Lunar Gateway (where spacecraft will dock and resupply) and the Artemis Base Camp on the surface, where astronauts will eat, exercise, and sleep when not conducting extravehicular activities (EVAs) – i.e., surface operations.

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The race to find medical treatments for Covid-19—and future pandemics—is on, driving renewed investments by the healthcare and pharmaceutical industries in Real-World Data (RWD) and Real-World Evidence (RWE). A new report on AI and the real-world studies industry, from Deep Pharma Intelligence (DPI), Evomics Medical and The Yuan (an online forum focused on AI in healthcare, for which I am a contributor), provides fresh insights into this rapidly evolving patient-centric approach to increasing R&D efficiency, accelerating the introduction of new drugs, and improving health outcomes. Full Story:

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TRU Community Care in Lafayette was the host to the unveiling of a brand new technology in the medical field — a humanoid robot that can perform basic medical tasks.

Beyond Imagination, an AI company based out of Colorado Springs, visited the Lafayette hospice center to test out the robot, named BEOMNI.

“We are excited that TRU sees the almost limitless potential of our humanoid robots in health care and has agreed to run this first pilot study with us. We look forward to partnering with them to bring a highly effective solution to market,” said inventor and CEO Dr. Harry Kloor.

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The Indian edtech giant Byju’s keeps getting bigger, having raised more than $4.5 billion since it was founded 10 years ago. This month the company made clear its ambitious research agenda: to achieve the science-fiction dream of building next-generation teaching aids with artificial intelligence.

Specifically, the company announced a new research-and-development hub, with offices in Silicon Valley, London and Bangalore, that will work on applying the latest findings from artificial intelligence and machine learning to new edtech products. The new hub, called Byju’s Lab, will also work on “moonshots” of developing new forms of digital tutoring technology, said Dev Roy, chief innovation and learning officer for BYJU’s, in a recent interview with EdSurge.

“Edtech is one of the slowest adopters of AI so far, compared to some of the other industries out there,” Roy said. “Even in health care, what DeepMind has done with mapping the proteins of DNA—nobody’s doing that in the education sector.”

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“It is not known at this time whether the variant is more transmissible, or more dangerous to the health of those who catch it, than other coronavirus variants.”

There are two confirmed cases of the omicron variant of the coronavirus in Ottawa, the Ontario government announced Sunday.

“Today, the province of Ontario has confirmed two cases of the omicron variant of COVID-19 in Ottawa, both of which were reported in individuals with recent travel from Nigeria. Ottawa Public Health is conducting case and contact management and the patients are in isolation,” the statement said.

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How will future AI systems make the most ethical choices for all of us?

Artificial intelligence is already making decisions in the fields of business, health care, and manufacturing. But AI algorithms generally still get help from people applying checks and making the final call.

What would happen if AI systems had to make independent decisions and ones that could mean life or death for humans?

Unlike humans, robots lack a moral conscience and follow the “ethics” programmed into them. At the same time, human morality is highly variable. The “right” thing to do in any situation will depend on who you ask.

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For the first time, researchers appear to have effectively treated a genetic disorder by directly injecting a CRISPR therapy into patients’ bloodstreams — overcoming one of the biggest hurdles to curing diseases with the gene editing technology.

The therapy appears to be astonishingly effective, editing nearly every cell in the liver to stop a disease-causing mutation.

The challenge: CRISPR gives us the ability to correct genetic mutations, and given that such mutations are responsible for more than 6,000 human diseases, the tech has the potential to dramatically improve human health.

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