GE Healthcare and Intel have a new software hardware combination that can get the most critical X-rays to the top an ER doctor's review stack. The new solution puts GE's mobile, digital X-ray system, its artificial intelligence-powered Critical Care Suite, and Intel's computer vision platform OpenVINO in one product. The Critical Care algorithms are embedded in the imaging devices to speed up image processing time. OpenVINO improves computing power to allow hospitals to deploy this new service on existing hardware. "So, the thing that's actually capturing the images is also doing the processing," said Todd Minnigh, CMO X-Ray, GE Healthcare, in a press release.

GE Healthcare and Intel have a new software hardware combination that can get the most critical X-rays to the top an ER doctor's review stack. The new solution puts GE's mobile, digital X-ray system, its artificial intelligence-powered Critical Care Suite, and Intel's computer vision platform OpenVINO in one product. The Critical Care algorithms are embedded in the imaging devices to speed up image processing time. OpenVINO improves computing power to allow hospitals to deploy this new service on existing hardware. "So, the thing that's actually capturing the images is also doing the processing," said Todd Minnigh, CMO X-Ray, GE Healthcare, in a press release.

HeartVista is hoping to increase the use of CardiacMRI's. To achieve this goal, the Los Altos, CA-based company has developed the One Click Cardiac Package MRI software, which recently received FDA clearance. "It has been widely excepted in the clinical community and the scientific community that cardiac MRI is the gold standard for everything that you can almost do or diagnose in a cardiac setting," Itamar Kandel, HeartVista's CEO, told MD DI. "But the problem is that the actual scan itself is very complex; takes a lot of time, and takes a very high level of skill to even perform." He added, "You have this situation where the best technology is not approachable to the vast majority of the needs. The problem we came to solve is to bring this technology to the masses -to democratize Cardiac MRI." HeartVista's FDA-cleared Cardiac Package uses AI-assisted software to prescribe the standard cardiac views with just one click, and in as few as 10 seconds, while the patient breathes freely.

Tempus, a technology company advancing precision medicine through the practical application of artificial intelligence in healthcare, today announced that Dr. Scott Gottlieb, MD, has joined its Board of Directors. Dr. Gottlieb will serve as an advisor to Tempus and its leadership team, leveraging his vast experience as a medical policy expert and public health advocate to support Tempus as it harnesses the power and promise of big data and artificial intelligence to personalize patient care. Dr. Gottlieb most recently served as the 23rd Commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), where he focused on developing innovative approaches to improving medical outcomes, reshaping healthcare delivery, and expanding patient choice and safety. Previously, he also served as the agency's Deputy Commissioner for Medical and Scientific Affairs and as a Senior Advisor to the FDA Commissioner. During his time as a Senior Advisor to the Administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, Dr. Gottlieb worked on the implementation of the Medicare drug benefit, where he supported policy work on quality improvement and the agency's coverage process, particularly as it related to new medical technologies.

With the digital medicine revolution in full swing, just about every specialty will experience some form of health care technology impact. AI algorithms, deep learning systems, and neural networks are already being used to detect lung cancer, screen skin lesions, and predict acute kidney injury. In the surgical realm, technological advancements previously involved the use of computer-assisted surgery (CAS) to improve precision and facilitate minimally invasive approaches. The da Vinci Surgical System obtained FDA approval in 2000 and, according to the company website, has been used in more than 6 million procedures world-wide. In orthopedics, CAS was introduced in the 1990s with perhaps joint replacement surgery as its most popular and widespread application.

Viz.ai, a healthcare startup that's using artificial intelligence (AI) to help medical professionals spot early signs of stroke, has raised $50 million in a series B round of funding led by Greenoaks, with participation from Alphabet's VC arm GV and Kleiner Perkins. In the U.S. alone, someone has a stroke every 40 seconds, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), culminating in some 140,000 deaths each year -- or 1 in every 20 deaths. Moreover, those who survive a stroke often suffer long-term disability as a result. As with many medical conditions, early stroke detection is the key to treating and negating the impact of strokes, but they can be difficult to diagnose. And even then, coordinating treatment among the various specialists can cause unnecessary delays.

A Cleveland Clinic-backed XR medical visualization startup, MediView XR, Inc., has launched with $4.5 million in funding. The company uses the HoloLens and their custom software to help doctors visualize patient anatomy, and anchor it precisely on their body, giving the doctor, in essence, x-ray specs. The fundamental holographic visualization technology was initially developed at the Lerner Research Institute at the Cleveland Clinic to help surgeons better visualize and plan for the face transplant. Karl West led the team, using a HoloLens to create 3D holographic representations of the donor's skull and other anatomy to assess and refine their surgical plans. Jeffrey Yanof, PhD, created the software.

TOPSHOT - Irish rock band U2 singer Bono gestures at Lyon's city hall, central eastern France, on ... [ ] October 9, 2019, during the funding conference of Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria. The fund has asked for $14 billion, an amount it says would help save 16 million lives, avert "234 million infections" and place the world back on track to meet the UN objective of ending the epidemics of HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria within 10 years. An FDA-cleared smart thermometer powered with artificial intelligence (AI) from Kinsa can estimate influenza-like illness across the US in real-time and predict a pattern three weeks before it's identified. To create a real-time illness-signal Kinsa aggregates tens of millions of anonymized data inputs from close to a million US households with a Kinsa thermometer and applies AI to triage illnesses based on severity, duration and contagiousness. From this data, Kinsa was able to create a real-time health map using their smart thermometer which serves as a geo-precise signal for tracking illness.

A new report estimates the cost of waste in the U.S. healthcare system alone ranges as high as $935 billion a year, about 25 percent of total healthcare spending. A growing army of startups and established practitioners sees the inefficiencies as a trillion-dollar opportunity to apply AI. The U.S. spends about 18 percent of its gross domestic product on healthcare, more than any other country. A report published online by the Journal of the American Medical Association surveyed 54 studies to estimate annual waste figures in six broad categories, including failures from choosing ineffective treatments (up to $166 billion), failures from coordinating multiple treatments ($78 billion), fraud and abuse ($84 billion) and administrative complexity ($266 billion). "Implementation of effective measures to eliminate waste represents an opportunity to reduce the continued increases in U.S. health care expenditures," the report concluded.

"In order to identify the rare few drug candidates that induce desired epigenetic effects, scientists need methods to screen hundreds of thousands of potential compounds," says Alexey Terskikh, Ph.D., associate professor in Sanford Burnham Prebys' Development, Aging and Regeneration Program and senior author of the study. "Our study describes a powerful image-based approach that enables high-throughput epigenetic drug discovery." Epigenetics refers to chemical tags on DNA that allow cellular machinery greater or less access to genes -- thus altering gene expression. Nearly all changes in a cell, including reaction to a drug and environmental stress, are reflected by its epigenetic state. Several medicines that target epigenetic alterations are approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for the treatment of cancer, and researchers are working to find additional epigenetic-based therapies.