The Human Impact of Machine Learning in Medical Diagnostics & More Xconomy

In January, UC San Diego announced that a group of scientists had succeeded in training a computer to tell the difference between a person with a "healthy" intestine from someone with inflammatory bowel disease by analyzing the genetic makeup of the microbes in their gut. Less than two weeks later, scientists at Stanford University said they also had created an artificial intelligence algorithm that could diagnose skin cancer as accurately as a panel of 21 board-certified dermatologists. These recent advances suggest we are on the verge of some major innovations in the use of machine learning for medical diagnoses. Think what it would mean, for example, if you could use your smartphone to take a photo of a worrisome mole and send the image in to be remotely analyzed by a computer system. The Xconomy Forum on the Human Impact of Innovation, set for next Wednesday, April 19, at the Alexandria at Torrey Pines, was organized to highlight innovations that are expected to bring transformational change to how we live our lives.