Thanks to approvals from the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for applications such as primary disease diagnosis, digital pathology is rapidly becoming the new standard of care. However, this advancement creates challenges that artificial intelligence could help solve. Digital pathology enables capturing pathology information, such as whole slide images (WSI), and working with it digitally using a specialized scanner. Acquiring, studying and managing data in this way allows sharing between parties on a computer or mobile device. According to experts, the global digital pathology market was worth $689.2 million in 2018.

In a study, researchers designed an algorithm that analyzes data on drug-drug interactions listed in reports - compiled by the Food and Drug Administration and other organizations - for use in a possible alert system that would let patients know when a drug combination could prompt dangerous side effects. "Let's say I'm taking a popular over-the-counter pain reliever and then I'm put on blood pressure medicine, and these medications have an interaction with each other that, in turn, affects my liver," said Soundar Kumara, the Allen E. Pearce and Allen M. Pearce Professor of Industrial Engineering, Penn State. "Essentially, what we have done, in this study, is to collect all of the data on all the diseases related to the liver and see what drugs interact with each other to affect the liver." Drug-drug interaction problems are significant because patients are frequently prescribed multiple drugs and they take over-the-counter medicine on their own, added Kumara, who also is an affiliate of the Institute for CyberScience, which provides supercomputing resources for Penn State researchers. "This study is of very high importance," said Kumara.

You could be forgiven for thinking that AI will soon replace human physicians based on headlines such as "The AI Doctor Will See You Now," "Your Future Doctor May Not Be Human," and "This AI Just Beat Human Doctors on a Clinical Exam." But experts say the reality is more of a collaboration than an ousting: Patients could soon find their lives partly in the hands of AI services working alongside human clinicians. There is no shortage of optimism about AI in the medical community. But many also caution the hype surrounding AI has yet to be realized in real clinical settings. There are also different visions for how AI services could make the biggest impact. And it's still unclear whether AI will improve the lives of patients or just the bottom line for Silicon Valley companies, health care organizations, and insurers.

Imagine your body is like a loaf of sliced bread. During an MRI scan, a powerful magnet and radio waves create detailed images of each "slice" of your body, then a computer puts the slices together to show a full picture of your anatomy. But before the slicing comes the choosing. Before an MRI technologist can scan a patient, they have to manually specify the slices they want the MRI to acquire. This process can take several minutes of tweaking and adjusting, leaving a patient waiting anxiously in the MRI scanner and adding unnecessary steps to set up each scan.

It's no secret that big tech companies like Amazon (AMZN), Microsoft (MSFT), and Alphabet (GOOG), the parent company of Google, are investing in digital healthcare. The market opportunity is pretty enticing when you consider that the U.S. alone spent $3.65 trillion on healthcare just last year. Google made the latest headline-grabbing move when it announced that it would buy wearables-maker Fitbit (FIT) in a deal valued at $2.1 billion. Analysts have noted that the acquisition is part of the company's overall strategy to build an ambient intelligent system where Google is omnipresent. Another motive behind the purchase – pending regulatory approvals – is that Fitbit gives Google access to a treasure trove of healthcare data that it can feed to its London-based AI lab DeepMind or its life sciences subsidiary Verily, which is already collaborating on at least one AI healthcare device for remote patient monitoring.

It's no secret that big tech companies like Amazon (AMZN), Microsoft (MSFT), and Alphabet (GOOG), the parent company of Google, are investing in digital healthcare. The market opportunity is pretty enticing when you consider that the U.S. alone spent $3.65 trillion on healthcare just last year. Google made the latest headline-grabbing move when it announced that it would buy wearables maker Fitbit (FIT) in a deal valued at $2.1 billion. Analysts have noted that the acquisition is part of the company's overall strategy to build an ambient intelligent system where Google is omnipresent. Another motive behind the purchase – pending regulatory approvals – is that Fitbit gives Google access to a treasure trove of healthcare data that it can feed to its London-based AI lab DeepMind or its life sciences subsidiary Verily, which is already collaborating on at least one AI healthcare device for remote patient monitoring.

Artificial intelligence (AI) is rapidly entering health care and serving major roles, from automating drudgery and routine tasks in medical practice to managing patients and medical resources. As developers create AI systems to take on these tasks, several risks and challenges emerge, including the risk of injuries to patients from AI system errors, the risk to patient privacy of data acquisition and AI inference, and more. Potential solutions are complex but involve investment in infrastructure for high-quality, representative data; collaborative oversight by both the Food and Drug Administration and other health-care actors; and changes to medical education that will prepare providers for shifting roles in an evolving system. The flashiest use of medical AI is to do things that human providers--even excellent ones--cannot yet do. For instance, Google Health has developed a program that can predict the onset of acute kidney injury up to two days before the injury occurs; compare that to current medical practice, where the injury often isn't noticed until after it happens.2

In the golden age of Artificial Intelligence, healthcare is the new frontier of research and development. Surgeons are routinely using robotic assists to operate with less invasiveness and more precision. Gene sequencing and gene editing aided by AI is transforming the way scientists obtain cures for diseases. But, most notably, research is underway to allow AI to transform the way doctors diagnose patients. You have symptoms of a cold.

Marlborough medical device maker Hologic announced Tuesday it has received U.S. Food & Drug Administration approval for its 3DQuorum Imaging Technology to reduces image interpretation time. The company said when combined with its high-resolution imaging technology, this new technology reduces the number of images needing to be reviewed without compromising image quality or accuracy through using artificial intelligence to find the best images. The number of images to be reviewed is reduced by 66%, according to Hologic, saving an average of one hour per eight hours of image interpretation time. The technology is available for use with existing and future Hologic 3D mammography systems.

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