The future of healthcare is a technology-driven one, with machine learning, deep learning and other aspects of artificial intelligence all crucial elements.
Collaboration—whether machine-to-machine, human and machine or human-to-human—and its challenges and limitations will still play key roles.
That was the take-away from the inaugural Children’s Hospital of Orange County AI & MD Summit.
The event, held last month, made the point that using AI in healthcare is complicated, splitting the audience into three teams for a game. The first person on each team was presented with 10 medical terms, and then that person whispered each term into the ear of the person standing to his or her right, and the exchange was repeated all the way down to the last person on each team, who reported what they heard.
The results demonstrated more than words lost in translation, also highlighting that what was “heard” differed greatly without context—or to nonhealthcare professionals, without medical knowledge.
For example, all three teams reported “cabbage” for the acronym CABG, or coronary artery bypass grafting.
CABG is pronounced like the vegetable.
Pediatric cardiologist Anthony Chang, CHOC chief intelligence and innovation officer, is an advocate of using AI to transform healthcare for children and adults.
Dr. Kathy Jenkins, executive director of the Center for Applied Pediatric Quality Analytics at Boston Children’s Hospital and professor of pediatrics at Harvard Medical School, told the Business Journal that doctors and institutions are already using AI to some degree, such as analyzing data and for pattern recognition. But questions remain about how to thoughtfully integrate AI into clinical care.
Chang said data scientists and doctors must work together to develop AI in healthcare.
About 40 people attended the summit. Chang said he wants to keep AI & MD Summit events to about 50 participants.
Summit topics also included big data, cloud computing, analytics and wearable technology. Chang said during the event that the next wave of healthcare is cognitive architecture, or “finding ways to make a computer act more like a human mind.”
Chang also founded Artificial Intelligence in Medicine, or AIMed. He started holding an AIMed conference in 2014 to advance data science and artificial intelligence, and will host the third annual AIMed North America in Laguna Niguel in December.
Clinical
• The University of California-Irvine’s Institute for Memory Impairments and Neurological Disorders, or MIND, received a $500,000 grant through the Orange County Community Foundation to test more than 1,200 Food and Drug Administration-approved compounds.
The funding was provided by the foundation’s S.L. Gimbel Foundation Fund.
MIND, which focuses on aging and dementia research, is the only state and federally-funded Alzheimer’s disease research center in Orange County.
Center Director Dr. Josh Grill said the 1,280 drugs currently have no relation to Alzheimer’s disease. The study will test to see if any could have an impact on the disease.
“Alzheimer’s disease is the sixth-leading cause of death in the United States, and the third-leading cause of death here in Orange County,” he said.
• Hancock Jaffe Laboratories Inc. (Nasdaq: HJLI) got the nod to start the first in-human study of its VenoValve, in Bogota, Colombia.
The Irvine-based bioprosthetic medical device maker, which specializes in cardiac and vascular diseases, is developing the product to treat chronic venous insufficiency—improper functioning of vein valves in the leg resulting in swelling, pain and open-sore wounds.
It said in a statement that there are currently no FDA-approved treatments for the condition.
Bogota’s Instituto Nacional de Vigilancia de Medicamentos y Alimentos, where the study is being performed, is the Colombian equivalent of the FDA.
Hancock Jaffe, founded in 1999, raised $8.6 million when it went public in May. Its market value is about $24 million, down more than half since the IPO.
Hospital News
Dallas-based Tenet Healthcare Corp. expanded two of its local hospitals.
Placentia-Linda Hospital added a brand-new operating room for minimally-invasive surgeries, including cardio, vascular and interventional radiology procedures, and Los Alamitos Medical Center now offers outpatient joint-replacement surgeries.
The cost of the upgrades total about $10 million.
Separately, Placentia-Linda announced that Keslie Blackwell, assistant chief financial officer, is being promoted to chief financial officer, effective Sept. 17. Brittany Lavis, who previously held the role, will be transferred to Tenet’s Detroit Medical Center as market chief financial officer, effective Oct. 1.
The healthcare system has 68 hospitals in 47 states.
