An Introduction to Machine Learning in Medicine

There is no question that machine learning has revolutionised our world and the way that we interact with it. Most of us interact with it every day and struggle to remember a time before we could ask Alexa to "set an alarm for 6 AM tomorrow morning". From GPS traffic predictions and spam filtering to security surveillance and fraud detection, machine learning has made our lives faster and more convenient than ever before. It is clear that a wide variety of industries have adapted to utilise machine learning, and the healthcare sector is no exception. The healthcare sector has always possessed a large amount of information, with an estimated amount of data around 150 exabytes (1 exabyte 10¹⁸) in 2011. This information is present in a wide variety of forms, including written medical records, medical images, laboratory test results, familial history and genetic databases.