This year has highlighted, more than ever before, the importance of technology in realizing the dream of healthy communities. While the COVID-19 pandemic drew individuals apart physically, in some ways this crisis has encouraged us to come together digitally. The result has been a tsunami of potentially critically important healthcare and research data that needs swift, accurate analysis.
To that end, this year has brought emerging technologies like Artificial Intelligence and Deep Learning from the fringes of the healthcare industry to center stage, as researchers, caregivers, and governments alike work to tease out real-time insights and trends that may be crucial to stopping the spread of this disease.
AI and COVID-19 outbreak
In fact, it wasnโt a government or hospital that sounded the earliest alarms this year. On December 31, 2019, Canadian analytics company, Blue Dot, reported an emerging pandemic risk originating in Hubei, China. The startup uses AI to analyze foreign-language news reports, animal and plant disease reporting networks, official government notices, and global airline ticketing data to identify disease outbreaks and hotspots.
In March, HPE joined other technology leaders to form the COVID-19 High-Performance Computing Consortium promising to provide the tools for the kind of deep analytics required to track the virus and search for a cure. In April, we signed the Open COVID Pledge, granting free access to all of our patented technologies for the purpose of fighting COVID-19.
Throughout the pandemic, HPE has continued the battle against COVID-19, working with research institutes and governments around the globe to provide the high-performance computing infrastructure needed for AI to source and analyze data that is driving the search for new drug treatments and vaccinations. Examples for where Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) used an HPC cluster powered by HPE, to improve predictions and speed up the design of 20 initial antibody candidates for the vaccine among 1040 possibilities by using a first-of-its-kind AI modeling platform.
Digital innovation Leading Healthcare Revolution
Going well beyond the current crisis, deep learning AI algorithms are powering a revolution in the healthcare industry in drug discovery, mental health therapy, records management, research accelerations, medical imaging analytics and more. Imagine a diagnostic tool that could not only analyze your personal health data, but then cross-reference it with medical journals, public health announcements, and anonymized medical data from other patients all in a matter of seconds to give more insides and to be used for the country national wide healthcare programs.
Beside AI many other digital innovations are contributing to this revolution and HPE has been engaged in many leading transformational projects and efforts in the healthcare sector, one example with telemedicine, connecting doctors and patients that are unable to provide in-person care. At the Vancouver Clinic in Washington state, HPE helped establish a telemedicine program and expanded its virtual call center for critical frontline employees. Now 40 percent of routine checks can be done remotely. These programs, critical for providing care while avoiding the spread of COVID-19.
Another example with precision medicine- Personalized Healthcare-, HPE collaborated with biotechnology and artificial intelligence (AI) startup Jungla to enable real-time personalized medical care for patients. By applying the exponential performance scaling of HPE's Memory-Driven Computing to Jungla's data sets, HPE will help Jungla accelerate the clarity and utility of clinical genetic and genomic tests. AI based Stroke detection solution can expedite and accelerate the proper treatments to save many patients life, and this is another real case that HPE worked on with global partners
Data accessibility and privacy
As AI services are mainly power by data, this raises many concerns about how to access data from different sources with so many data-producing endpoints across medical environments, then how to analyze this data in realtime to train the AI algorithms with higher accuracy, but at the same time not to expose the patients data and breach privacy.
Now an AI-powered healthcare industry could finally marry the disparate needs of accessibility and privacy bringing cutting-edge treatments and information to stakeholders across the industry in a matter of clicks by leveraging HPE Swarm Learning, which is a new technology developed by HPE that decentralized the machine learning solutions keeping the computational power at the edge where the data resides and leveraging the proven security of the blockchain. In its completely decentralized architecture, only learned insights instead of the raw data are shared among collaborating machine learning peers, which tremendously enhances data security and privacy. So different hospitals can share and leverage AI learnings and conclusions with exposing raw user data.
Directions and conclusion
This type of innovation and AI technology is not, however, a replacement for highly trained humans in the field. In fact, the automation of repetitive tasks and administrative obligations will allow caregivers to focus on the irreplaceable human touch necessary to provide a high quality of care.
As we cautiously see a glimmer of light at the end of the tunnel, this yearโs challenges have highlighted the critical need for healthcare industry stakeholders to invest in the technology that will support high-performance AI technologies. Because while the cure may come with the **bleep** of a syringe, the research that made it possible began with the click of a mouse.
Source: https://bluedot.global/
Morad Qutqut
Chief Customer Innovation Officer (CCIO), WW Customer Advocacy
Hewlett Packard Enterprise
MoradQutqut
Morad is leading an integrated customer engagement process that translates customer business aspirations into digital innovations to support the customerโs overall business vision. Bringing industry experience, subject matter expertise and an echo system of innovated partners together following a state of art, well-defined innovation methodology to convert dreams into reality.
