The Director of the Cedars-Sinai Center for Surgical Innovation and Engineering shares his thoughts on how AI and wearable technologies are transforming medicine.
The combination of wearable tech like Fitbits and Smartwatches and the Internet of Things with AI is poised to have a major transformative effect on medicine and healthcare.
Imagine if you will a scenario in which such a device on your wrist tracks not only your step count, but also your blood sugar, heart rate, blood pressure and respiration. Then, the watch automatically sends a personalized health snapshot to your physician, alerting them to early signs of disease. According to according to Joseph Schwab, MD, director of the Cedars-Sinai Center for Surgical Innovation and Engineering, that world is not far off, and thanks to AI, much of it is already here. Schwab is leading innovative research into wearable healthcare technologies. He had this to say in a recent interview in Cedars-Sinai Discoveries Magazine.
“Our focus area is wearable devices,” says Dr. Schwab. “Consumer wearables on the market are essentially motion trackers. They may have an accelerometer or gyroscope that can simply measure your position or motion to track steps and other data. What we’re doing is different in that our devices are sending energy—in the form of light, electrical energy, and sound—into the tissues, and we can measure that energy as it leaves the tissue, and we can deduce things based on how the energy was affected by the tissue.”
Where Does AI Come Into the Equation?
Schwab explains where AI comes into the mix and how it is the real game-changer. “The sensors on our wearable devices receive an incredible amount of data from the energy after it has traveled through the tissue, which requires advanced computing power to interpret. At its core, AI is just that—very advanced mathematics and computer programming. We utilize AI to interpret the data captured and correlate it to clinical problems.”
He continues, “Separate from our wearable technologies; we are also able to use AI to make predictions on a smaller scale for use in clinical practice, such as interpreting electronic health data. For instance, a patient may be considering a procedure that has a 5% risk of complication for the whole population; however, using AI to interpret their personal health information, we may learn that their individual complication risk is closer to 25%. This could heavily impact their decision-making. Giving more precise predictions like this is a form of personalized medicine.”
The technologies that Schwab and his team are developing can truly benefit everyone across the healthcare spectrum. Patients whose health data is analyzed could receive more personalized care. They could be directed to more precise tests to get an accurate diagnosis and personalized treatments, for example, and may ultimately have better outcomes.
There’s even the potential for a positive impact on healthcare payers and insurance companies by making the right treatment decisions and thus reducing health expenditures. There are so many opportunities and benefits.
How BigRio Helps Bring Advanced AI Solutions to Healthcare
At BigRio, we share Dr. Schwab’s vision of the transformative power of AI in healthcare. In fact, improving disease detection and diagnostics is the area where AI is making one of the technology’s biggest impacts. We pride ourselves on being a facilitator and incubator for such advances in leveraging AI to improve diagnostics.
In fact, we have launched an AI Studio specifically for US-based Healthcare startups with AI centricity. Our mission is to help AI startups scale and gear up to stay one step ahead of the pack and emerge as winners in their respective domains.
AI Startups face numerous challenges when it comes to demonstrating their value proposition, particularly when it comes to advanced AI solutions for pharma and healthcare. We have taken an award-winning and unique approach to incubating and facilitating startups that allow the R&D team and stakeholders to efficiently collaborate and craft the process to best suit actual ongoing needs, which leads to a faster, more accurate output.
We provide:
- Access to a top-level talent pool, including business executives, developers, data scientists, and data engineers.
- Assistance in the development and testing of the MVP, Prototypes, and POCs.
- Professional services for implementation and support of Pilot projects
- Sales and Marketing support and potential client introductions.
- Access to private capital sources.
BigRio excels in overcoming such initial hurdles, which present nearly insurmountable obstacles to a startup operation.
You can read much more about how AI is redefining healthcare delivery and drug discovery in my new book Quantum Care: A Deep Dive into AI for Health Delivery and Research. It’s a comprehensive look at how AI and machine learning are being used to improve healthcare delivery at every touchpoint.
Rohit Mahajan is a Managing Partner with BigRio. He has a particular expertise in the development and design of innovative solutions for clients in Healthcare, Financial Services, Retail, Automotive, Manufacturing, and other industry segments.
BigRio is a technology consulting firm empowering data to drive innovation and advanced AI. We specialize in cutting-edge Big Data, Machine Learning, and Custom Software strategy, analysis, architecture, and implementation solutions. If you would like to benefit from our expertise in these areas or if you have further questions on the content of this article, please do not hesitate to contact us.
