Opportunities for machine learning use in cystic fibrosis care

Accurately predicting how an individual's chronic illness is going to progress is critical to delivering better-personalised, precision medicine. Yet there is an enormous challenge in accurately predicting the clinical trajectories of people for chronic health conditions such as cystic fibrosis (CF), cancer, cardiovascular disease and Alzheimer's disease. AI technology developed by the Cambridge Centre for AI in Medicine and their colleagues offers a glimpse of the future of precision medicine, and the predictive power which may be available to clinicians caring for individuals with the life-limiting condition cystic fibrosis. "Prediction problems in healthcare are fiendishly complex," said Professor Mihaela van der Schaar, Director of the Cambridge Centre for AI in Medicine (CCAIM). "Even machine learning approaches, which deal in complexity, struggle to deliver meaningful benefits to patients and clinicians, and to medical science more broadly. Off-the-shelf machine learning solutions, so useful in many areas, simply do not cut it in predictive medicine."