Amit Katwala, Wired; This Code Breaker Is Using AI to Decode the Heart’s Secret Rhythms
"There’s an AI boom in health care, and the only thing slowing it down is a lack of data."
Issues and developments related to ethics, information, and technologies, examined in the ethics and intellectual property graduate courses I teach at the University of Pittsburgh School of Computing and Information. My Bloomsbury book "Ethics, Information, and Technology" will be published in Summer 2025. Kip Currier, PhD, JD
Amit Katwala, Wired; This Code Breaker Is Using AI to Decode the Heart’s Secret Rhythms
"There’s an AI boom in health care, and the only thing slowing it down is a lack of data."
Harvard Business Review, Azeem Azhar's Exponential View / Season 6, Episode 58; The Challenges and Benefits of Generative AI in Health Care
"Artificial Intelligence is on every business leader’s agenda. How do we make sense of the fast-moving new developments in AI over the past year? Azeem Azhar returns to bring clarity to leaders who face a complicated information landscape.
Generative AI has a lot to offer health care professionals and medical scientists. This week, Azeem speaks with renowned cardiologist, scientist, and author Eric Topol about the change he’s observed among his colleagues in the last two years, as generative AI developments have accelerated in medicine.
They discuss:
Mike Miliard, HealthcareITNews; Senator wants Google to answer for accuracy, ethics of generative AI tool
"Sen. Mark Warner, D-Virginia, wrote a letter to Sundar Pichai, CEO of Google parent company Alphabet, on Aug. 8, seeking clarity into the technology developer's Med-PaLM 2, an artificial intelligence chatbot, and how it's being deployed and trained in healthcare settings."
The University of British Columbia; Drones get blood to patients faster—and reduce waste
"Prompt blood delivery can be lifesaving for people who need transfusions for emergencies such as postpartum hemorrhage, severe malaria, or traumatic injuries. However, only a few facilities in Rwanda are able to collect and store blood, posing a serious risk for people who don’t live near distribution centers...
In 2016, Rwanda became the first African country to integrate drone deliveries into its healthcare system. The project is a partnership between the Government of Rwanda and California-based robotics company Zipline Inc.
Currently, the program is focused mainly on blood deliveries. However, the project has started to expand the deliveries of vaccines and essential medicines for the treatment of diseases such as HIV/AIDS, COVID-19, malaria, and tuberculosis.
While most studies to this point have focused on feasibility, the new paper from Nisingizwe and her team is one of the first to measure actual outcomes. Next, the researchers want to determine whether drone delivery improves health outcomes and is ultimately cost-effective, and explore its potential for transporting other perishable health products and medicines.
“Drone technology has tremendous potential to improve access to care for people living in rural and remote areas, not just in Rwanda, but all around the world,” said Dr. Michael Law, a professor in UBC’s Centre for Health Services and Policy Research and senior author on the study.
Drone delivery is being explored as a potential healthcare solution in other countries, including in British Columbia, where a UBC-led study is exploring the feasibility of using drones to transport medical supplies between Stellat’en First Nation and the Village of Fraser Lake."
Gina Kolata, The New York Times ; Their DNA Hides a Warning, but They Don’t Want to Know What It Says
"Benjamin Berkman, a bioethicist at the National Institutes of Health, said that, in his view, the benefits of telling participants about genetic findings that can be treated or prevented greatly outweighed the risk that the participants might be frightened or fail to follow up.
“These are important pieces of information that can be lifesaving,” he said.
But not all biobanks give subjects the chance to receive health warnings.
At Vanderbilt, Dr. Clayton said, she volunteered genetic information to a biobank whose participants have been de-identified — all names and other personal information are stripped from the data. It also has other protections to prevent individuals in the bank from being found. While she happily contributed to the research, Dr. Clayton said, she is glad her data can’t be traced and that no one will call her if they find something that may be worrying.
“I don’t want to know,” she said."
Salam Alshareef; The Conversation ; How the intellectual property monopoly has impeded an effective response toCovid-19
"As of October 2021, only 0.7% of all manufactured vaccine doses had gone to low-income countries. Manufacturers had delivered 47 times as many doses to high-income countries as they had to low-income countries.
Since its inception, COVAX, the UN-backed initiative dedicated to promoting access to Covid vaccines, has struggled to obtain doses. It recently passed the 1 billion doses delivered – half way to its goal of delivering 2 billion doses by the end of 2021. Indeed, AstraZeneca, Pfizer/BioNTech, Moderna, and Johnson & Johnson have delivered between 0% and 39% of their already inadequate commitments to COVAX in 2021.
The Global Commission for Post-Pandemic Policy, meanwhile, estimates that while Asia and Europe will be able to fully vaccinate 80% of their populations by March 2022 and North America by May 2022, Africa will not reach 80% at current rates until April 2025."