Google offers glimpse into how AI can revolutionise healthcare

Google's deep-learning research, involving a large dataset of retinal images used in diagnosis of diabetic retinopathy (DR), a diabetes-linked pathology that causes irreversible blindness, shows the transformative power of artificial intelligence (AI) in healthcare. In 2016, the tech giant announced its deep-learning algorithm that had been trained using a dataset of 128,000 images--each of which had been reviewed by 3-7 expert ophthalmologists from a panel of 54--to accurately interpret underlying symptoms (microaneurysms, haemorrhages, hard exudates, etc) from fundus images (a specific type of imaging of the eye) and detect referable DR. Given the pathology affects 18% of the 70 million diabetics in India--and with 415 million diabetics worldwide, is now the fastest growing cause of blindness--Google's algorithm vastly improves the prospects of DR being screened by doctors faster, and in greater numbers than is possible in an unassisted scenario. For countries strained for resources and healthcare infrastructure, this is truly a manna since diagnosis in the early stages can prevent/delay onset of blindness. The algorithm's performance was tested with 12,000 images, with the majority opinion of panels of expert ophthalmologists drawn from Google's pool of 54 on each of these images set as the reference standard.