The story of American medicine is one of incredible scientific advancements, from the use of penicillin to treat syphilis and other bacterial infections to the countless biomedical breakthroughs made possible by cell-line research. Too often, however, these stories ignore an uncomfortable truth: Some of our nation's most significant medical discoveries were made possible through the mistreatment of Black patients--from the exploitation of African American farmers during the Tuskegee Syphilis Experiments to the tragic case of Henrietta Lacks, a black patient whose cells were stolen by doctors and used for decades of cell-line research. Racism is woven into our nation's medical past but is also part of our present, as evidenced by the Covid-19 crisis. From testing to treatment, Black and Latino patients have received a lower quality and quantity of care compared white Americans. As a country, we now have the opportunity to reverse course.

The story of American medicine is one of incredible scientific advancements, from the use of penicillin to treat syphilis and other bacterial infections to the countless biomedical breakthroughs made possible by cell-line research. Too often, however, these stories ignore an uncomfortable truth: Some of our nation's most significant medical discoveries were made possible through the mistreatment of Black patients--from the exploitation of African American farmers during the Tuskegee Syphilis Experiments to the tragic case of Henrietta Lacks, a black patient whose cells were stolen by doctors and used for decades of cell-line research. Racism is woven into our nation's medical past but is also part of our present, as evidenced by the Covid-19 crisis. From testing to treatment, Black and Latino patients have received a lower quality and quantity of care compared white Americans. As a country, we now have the opportunity to reverse course.

NAIROBI, Jan 31 (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - Ugandan doctors are giving new mothers artificial intelligence-enabled devices to remotely monitor their health in a first-of-its-kind study aiming to curb thousands of preventable maternal deaths across Africa, medics and developers said. Doctors at Mbarara Hospital in western Uganda will give devices to more than 1,000 women who have undergone caesarean section births to wear on their upper arms at all times. Algorithms detect at-risk cases and alert doctors. Joseph Ngonzi from Mbarara University of Science and Technology, which is conducting the study, said it would help "improve monitoring in a resource-constrained environment". The World Health Organization says almost 300,000 women worldwide die annually from preventable causes related to pregnancy and childbirth - that's more than 800 women every day.

Solving a challenge: This was the first task set out by the Mount Sinai AI Consortium, a group of scientists, physicians and researchers at New York City–based Mount Sinai Health System dedicated to developing artificial intelligence in medicine. "We wanted to [apply AI] in the healthcare context and tackle a problem that is clinically impactful and relevant to our practices," says Eric Karl Oermann, instructor in the department of neurosurgery at the Icahn School of Medicine and director of the AI program, dubbed AISINAI. The challenge the group landed on was to identify markers of acute neurological illnesses, such as hemorrhages and strokes. Time matters because a patient's "clinical condition is something that worsens, in some cases, by the minute," says Oermann. "They're extremely time-sensitive." With this in mind, the group set out to see if they could find a way to use AI and deep learning to save some of those precious minutes.

Instead of looking up at the sky to see whether you need an umbrella, people increasingly ask virtual assistants such as Alexa. And they may be wise to do so. AI methods are powerful – capable of anything from analysing astrophysical data to detecting tumours or helping to manage diabetes. An algorithm that analyses shopping patterns recently detected that a teenage girl was pregnant, earlier than her father did. So could childbirth be next for Al?