Tuesday 9 October 2018

Week 1 [08-14.10] Artificial Intelligence in Parkinson's Diagnosis


Specialists from British and Chinese companies exploring using artificial intelligence in Parkinson’s diagnosis. Camera captures hands movements and AI estimates severity of symptoms. Assessment process takes only few minutes instead of half an hour and can be done at home via smartphone. Head of Chinese tech giant Tencel stresses that their company focuses on helping treating diseases and the project allows to impact many patients not only in China or Great Britain, but also in other countries.

Link to a full text:  https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-45760649

What do you think about such technologies?
Does development of medical technologies help people or rather help health system to reduce amount of patients in hospitals or health centres  ?
Do companies really want to help patients in better and quicker diagnosis or look for new ways to earn money?

16 comments:

  1. I think that using Artificial Intelligence in medicine is a big step forward for a mankind. There was a research that application was checking beauty marks if it's safe or could be malignant melanoma and results were 60% more accurate than dermatologist thoughts.
    In my opinion it will reduce number of patients in hospitals, but what is more important it will lead to a lot quicker diagnosis, which is crucial as right now most of diseases could be cured when found early.
    I don't see any problem in earning money when your product/technology is good and can help a lot of people.

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  2. I am very happy that technology allows us to help sick people in everyday life. I believe that most scientists should focus on using technology to diagnose or treat diseases more quickly. I think that the development of medical technology will help reduce the number of people in hospitals, which will help other patients who need more help. Perhaps thanks to this, it will be possible to get rid of the problem of queues to the doctor in Poland. The main goal of medical companies is to get the most profits possible, but if they going to achieve this by creating a system that will help in a better and faster diagnosis, I completely support this idea.

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  4. I think that technologies such as those mentioned are a herald of many more innovations which may come in the future. Health informatics and related sciences may help both system and patients themselves. Faster diagnosis and convenience are beneficial to people's health and additionally health system may reduce costs and help even more people in need while less serious medical examination can be handled by commonly available technology. In 2018 we can observe an important example of a company which gained FDA's approval - Apple. Apple's case shows that even very big companies take interest in their customers health and that it can be a growing trend as number of wearable IOT devices constantly grow.

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  5. An artificial intelligence is a great way to enhance medical science and diagnosis. Although this example of recognizing Parkinson's illness made me wonder how it may possibly work. If you can diagnose the affliction by simply looking on shaking hands, AI won't make more, therefore isn't needed at all in this case.
    About your second question, medical technologies help both.
    Abouth the last one, maybe it depends on the company. Or it is also both - companies look for profit of course, but there is both side advantage.

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  6. @Małgorzata Bieniek, how to post a new article as you did? Or we must just write it in an email to Ms. Małgorzata Świerk and then she will put in on the blog?

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    1. You probably read comment from Ms Świerk, but if you want to post (in the future), you have to log in on blogger.com.

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    2. And accept invitation sent to your e-mail.

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  7. It's not really AI though. I mean, the things we use to call AI have nothing to do with actual intelligence as is the case in this example. I do think this is a step in the right direction. Now, I am not certain if this particular one is going to be much of an improvement as I would expect you still need to go to the doctor to actually confirm the diagnosis and get the treatment prescribed. Regardless, there is a lot of potential for growth and improvement in the medical care space. I envision a future where we do not rely on tired humans for help, but we are being diagnosed and treated by machines. I envision a future in which there will be a large need for medical code developers that would be able to apply, audit and change the rules on those machines, but not that much need for doctors and nurses. It's not even about faster treatment, it's about being more accurate and thourough. Being able to review thousands of examples that you have in your database and choose the one that would most closely resemble the one you have in front of you.

    They should get paid. Ultimately, it still might be worth less than subsiding the medical schools, going through university and paying the doctors. You get superior service in terms of time and quality, you should be happy to pay for that.
    The only problem is that there is a certain weil, or border that needs to be crossed with AI. People are feeling uneasy when driving in a car with no driving wheel. People would probably be uneasy if only the operations staff would be available in a hospital, but hopefully next generations will take care of that and treat it as though it is normal.

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    1. I also believe that in the future we could be diagnosed by the machines. Time and accuracy would be the key to faster treatment. I wonder how fast this could be the future.

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  8. I think that bringing more and more technology to medicine is the only way we can really help people. We already know so much that one person is not capable to know everything even in very small, specialist area. We all know that there are not enough specialists and too many patients waiting to see doctor and such technologies can help reduce diagnosis and waiting time. I think that many scientists that develop their products are focused on helping other people but there is nothing wrong in earning money from your work especially if it can help others.

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  9. I think it's really amazing that we live in times that allow us to help patients with various diseases. Artificial intelligence can be used in so many ways to help us all. But I don't believe that it's advanced enough, at least for now to completely reduce amount that people with Parkinson to go there. It's a step for now, but not a revolution.
    Now we need more doctors and scientists that arevailable in the hospitals and having AI can decrease amount of time they will be needed.
    I am sure that development of medical technologies help people in many ways. Of course companies wouldn't mind making more money but in the end it's health that matters. Hospitals and doctors will have more capacity if some of the tasks will be replaced by AI. Doctors should get paid to at least know how to get advantage of technology and how to use it properly for the best results and how to treat patients.

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  10. I believe that healthcare industry should take advantage of the current AI technology and start integrating it into their work. With the way machines are getting gradually better at analyzing complex data it would be such a waste to not use it. Further advancing medical science will allow us to understand patience's needs quicker and therefore cure them more effectively as well as decrease amount of patients in health centers. As for the last question than I am sure that someone will earn a lot of money on this innovations but there is nothing wrong with this.

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  11. Generally speaking I agree with the previous speakers. They used a lot of reasonable and wise arguments. What's more, I think there is no other way to improve our fight with all diseases like bringing together our effort. But we cannot forget about one thing. All global activity which involves technology and mass data should be controlled by the law. People are just people and in every group of people (doctors, scientists, politicians etc..) we can find a person who wants to use information against others. We can't forget that information aggregated during researches are very sensible and we should do everything to protect them.

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  12. Technology is just technology. How it will be used depends on people and comapnies. And business is always about the money. So they'll try to get most out of it.. still they are offering a product to clients, so everything seems alright. Companies get their money people get their product.

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  13. I think that this technologies becoming more and more important for medicine and our future. This could really improve Parkinson’s diagnosis. Artificial intelligence is successfully used in other industries, and could be successful in medicine too.
    Development of medical technologies help people. This improves the initial diagnosis and is the information to go to the doctor. However, this will not significantly reduce the number of patients in hospitals and clinics. The final diagnosis and treatment should be consulted with a real doctor.
    I think earning on medical technology is good. It affects technological progress and has a positive effect on the patient.

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