One of the most frustrating elements of the current healthcare environment is the administrative burden of prior authorizations for medications and procedures. It is a frustration for providers, for patients, and for payers. Is there any way to solve this dilemma? For physicians, an estimated 20 hours per week is spent in prior authorization activities, costing an average of 83,000 in excess annual overhead per physician. Is there an actual benefit for this effort? Most physicians say that payers (commercial, Medicare, Medicaid, and pharmacy benefit managers (PBMs)) use prior authorizations to keep costs down.

Artificial intelligence and concerns over the long term consequences has come up again in the news week in the form of a Scientific American blog musing over how artificial intelligence will evolve -- "Is AI Dangerous? It Depends…" There is a certain amount of hand wringing over AI and, to a lesser extent, its branches such as machine learning and natural language processing. It also drew attention to notables who have voiced concern over AI including Bill Gates, Stephen Hawking and Elon Musk. The concerns tend to emerge from worst case scenarios and assume that even though AI can be used for beneficial purposes, what if the technology is turned against us? But many people applying AI to make healthcare delivery more efficient and automated don't see it that way.

Food safety is vital to the well-being of society; therefore, it is important to inspect food products to ensure minimal health risks are present. The presence of certain species of insects, especially storage beetles, is a reliable indicator of possible contamination during storage and food processing. However, the current approach of identifying species by visual examination of insect fragments is rather subjective and time-consuming. To aid this inspection process, we have developed in collaboration with FDA food analysts some image analysis-based machine intelligence to achieve species identification with up to 90% accuracy. The current project is a continuation of this development effort. Here we present an image analysis environment that allows practical deployment of the machine intelligence on computers with limited processing power and memory. Using this environment, users can prepare input sets by selecting images for analysis, and inspect these images through the integrated panning and zooming capabilities. After species analysis, the results panel allows the user to compare the analyzed images with reference images of the proposed species. Further additions to this environment should include a log of previously analyzed images, and eventually extend to interaction with a central cloud repository of images through a web-based interface.

Emerald Medical Applications Corp. (OTCQB: MRLA), an Israeli-based company engaged in the development and sale of its proprietary DermaCompare cloud-based, artificial intelligence technology for the early diagnosis of Melanoma/skin cancer, today announced entry into a cooperation agreement with Terem, one of Israel's largest community-based, emergency healthcare providers with 17 medical facilities, serving over 700,000 patients throughout Israel. Starting in April 2016, Emerald will begin to offer its DermaCompare technology at each of Terem's clinics throughout Israel, offering advanced dermatological examinations, diagnosisand treatment led by a leading professional Dermatologists. DermaCompare is Emerald's cloud-based, artificial, intelligence technology using Total Body Photography imaging which is capable of being automatically compared to a patient's previous images to diagnose and detect the presence of Melanoma in its earliest stages. Lior Wayn, Emerald's CEO, stated that "DermaCompare, Emerald's FDA approved, HIPPA compliant software technology, which can be downloaded from any Mac or Android based App store, enables physicians andtheir patients, using virtually any digital camera, including cell phones, iPads, tablets and other similar devices, to take Total Body Photography images and, in real-time, transmit these images for dermatological evaluation and identification of suspicious moles, lesions and other skin conditions. These images are then compared using Emerald's cloud database, as well as the patients previous Total Body Photography images, which will dramatically enhance a physician's ability to detect Melanoma earlier, more accurately and more efficient than other means of diagnosis."

The annual Data Science Bowl hosted by Booz Allen Hamilton and Kaggle is based on the premise that crowdsourced solutions can be used to solve some of our world's most complex problems. This year, the focus was on heart health – an issue of critical importance worldwide. In the U.S. alone, one person is diagnosed with heart disease every 43 seconds. It typically takes 20 minutes to have an MRI analyzed and a diagnosis delivered. However, this year's Bowl managed to create an algorithm that allows your doctor to receive your results and prognosis in real-time.

One of the most frustrating elements of the current healthcare environment is the administrative burden of prior authorizations for medications and procedures. It is a frustration for providers, for patients, and for payers. Is there any way to solve this dilemma? For physicians, an estimated 20 hours per week is spent in prior authorization activities, costing an average of 83,000 in excess annual overhead per physician. Is there an actual benefit for this effort? Most physicians say that payers (commercial, Medicare, Medicaid, and pharmacy benefit managers (PBMs)) use prior authorizations to keep costs down.

The robots were supposedly coming for our jobs. Not just the blue collar jobs, but also the highly trained and exceptionally well-paid jobs of anesthesiologists. These doctors help patients walk the dangerously thin line between pain-free unconsciousness and death, and for that their services can cost 2,000 per procedure. A robot named Sedasys could do the same job for more like 200 … except that nobody wants to buy it. Several outlets are reporting that Johnson & Johnson will stop selling Sedasys because of poor sales.

A neuro-technology company has received Food and Drug Administration (FDA) clearance for a medical device that could detect concussions in less than 60 seconds on the sidelines of playing fields across the nation. EYE-SYNC, a product of SyncThink, is an integrated head-mounted eye-tracking device that analyzes eye movement impairment through the use of virtual reality. Dr. Jamshid Ghajar, neurosurgeon at Stanford University, president of the Brain Trauma Foundation, and SyncThink founder, told FoxNews.com the product is distinct mainly because it does not claim to diagnose a concussion but rather detects disruption in visual information. "All of the other technologies out there say that they're'diagnosing concussion,' but there's no accepted definition, so how are you diagnosing it?" he said. Data released by the National Football League (NFL) in January revealed the rate of concussions in the 2015 season was up nearly 32 percent compared with data from 2014, while the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reports that each year nearly 500,000 children are treated for a traumatic brain injury, including concussion.

Is there anyone working on either a decentralized deep learning algorithm, or a consumer facing app that uses AI to help people diagnose themselves? My wife was just diagnosed with CVID a couple of weeks ago, it's like AIDS except it's not Aquired, it's part genetic and part environmental - but it's a rare primary immunodeficiency disease. She's had this her entire life. She was misdiagnosed 3 or 4 times, most recently she was eating gluten free for the last 8 years because she was diagnosed as celiac disease. She's lost most of her hair over the last 6 months and has been in the hospital 3-4 times this year.

March 21, 2016– AliveCor, Inc., the leader in FDA-cleared ECG technology for mobile devices, announced today the appointment of two former Google leads, Frank Petterson and Simon Prakash. Petterson joins AliveCor as the company's Vice President of Engineering and Prakash as Vice President of Products and Design. Together they will drive the development of products that will continue to enable people and doctors worldwide to proactively manage heart conditions, anywhere anytime. They will lead engineers and data scientists to disrupt the standard of cardiac care and support the company's expansion into the new Wearable MedTech space, pioneered by AliveCor. "I am inspired by AliveCor's mission and vision of bringing together healthcare, wearable technology, and machine learning to create the'Wearable MedTech' category and I look forward to contributing to the goal of creating technology that will make a difference in millions of lives around the world," said Frank Petterson, vice president of engineering of AliveCor.