Microsoft is using machine learning to help fight blindness

Though robots and artificial intelligence may not replace our doctors entirely in the foreseeable future, they are already starting to make a difference. Microsoft is now using machine learning and artificial intelligence to help doctors in India to diagnoze and treat eye diseases. Earlier this year, Microsoft began working with the not-for-profit LV Prasad Eye Institute (LVPEI) in India to have its Azure machine learning and Power BI services analyze patterns among cases and predict the surgical outcome of eye surgery patients. The collaboration saw Microsoft going through a trove of data -- anonymized records of 1.1 million people -- and provide doctors with insights into how the blindness spreads in the country, Anil Bhansali, Managing Director of Microsoft India (R&D), explained to Mashable India in a conversation. Microsoft says it utilized Azure machine learning service to crunch the numbers and Power BI service to visualize those numbers to make sense out of them.