Mass General, Brigham and Women's to apply deep learning to medical records and images

Artificial intelligence is beginning to reshape healthcare and life sciences. And one application of AI, deep learning, is coming into its own. Deep learning is a type of machine learning based on data representations rather than task-specific algorithms. Learning can be supervised, semi-supervised or unsupervised. Much of the excitement around AI today is fundamental because of three ingredients: the development of algorithms that make artificial neural networks, the increasing supply of digital data that now can be created, and, critically, the "GPU" chip architecture – it stands for graphics processing unit – pioneered by vendor NVIDIA, said Mark Michalski, MD, executive director of the Massachusetts General Hospital and Brigham and Women's Hospital Center for Clinical Data Science. "GPU chips are different than the CPU chips that run many of our computers today in that they solve many simple problems simultaneously, as opposed to one big problem at a time, like CPUs," Michalski explained.