ISRAEL SOCIAL ENTREPRENEURSHIP FOR BETTER HEALTH
Two pioneers in Israeli medicine are turning the course of
health on its head, using Big Data and Artificial Intelligence to predict
illnesses and offer new courses of treatment. Dr. Kira Radinsky, and Professor
Ran Blitzer are changing the future of medicine in Israel, and probably the
world.
Dr. Radinsky’s work – which she sold as a start-up for $40
million – detects trends within a system which recognizes statistic links that
are invisible to the naked eye. The first version of this system – which were
based on her thesis – were able to successfully predict, weeks in advance,
outbreaks of cholera in Cuba. Unsurprisingly, Dr. Radinsky’s work has earned
her a host of prizes, and a place of honor in the list of “bright young
inventors of our generation” in magazines like MIT Tech Review and Forbes. In
2014 she lit a torch at the annual televised ceremony on Israel’s Independence
Day. She has also been appointed as eBay’s Chief Scientist in Israel.
What else is in the pipeline for Dr. Radinsky? Using
Artificial Intelligence to create breakthroughs in medicine, for instance,
experimenting with drugs that are FDA-approved for certain diseases and identifying
how they might be able to treat other diseases. Another direction of Artificial
Intelligence in medicine is the identification of new molecules, using AI that
will mark them as potential drugs. A third application of AI in medicine that
Dr. Radinsky is developing is the automation of diagnostics – that is, the
decoding of tests like ECGs. This means a rapid summary of truckloads of data,
which ultimately means a fast diagnosis and the support of medical decisions.
This can translate into a quick-fire decision in life and death situations.
Professor Ran Blitzer is also using Big Data to predict and
treat chronic illnesses, right here in Israel. He is the head of Clalit Health
Service’s General Institute for Research, which utilizes databases to improve
patients’ health. In 2014 the World Health Organization declared the Institute
a center for global excellence. Take kidney disease, for example: Professor
Blitzer’s team has created a predictive model that identifies within a
homogeneous group (in terms of kidney function) who will, and who will not be
prone to contract the disease. With these predictions, doctors can then adapt
treatment, which, at this early stage does not have to be dialysis. Generally,
the treatment is centered around nutritional change and a change in drug
therapy.
Another goal of Dr. Blitzer’s work is the minimalization of
unnecessary medical tests and screenings that could even potentially cause
harm. Though the Institute is academic, it also creates models of intervention
aimed at acting on the ground, such as the development of a model that will
predict on the day of hospitalization which patients are at risk of
re-hospitalization after discharge. After the patient is released, a computer
“nurse” will alert the nurse at his HMO, who will then know what follow-up questions
to ask and what treatment to advise, preventing his re-hospitalization. With
this technology, re-hospitalizations have already decreased by 9%.
With these ground-breaking advancements “patient-centered
medicine” will truly be a reality.
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