The Cleveland Clinic is partnering with San Francisco-based startup Piramidal to develop a large-scale AI model that will be used to monitor patients' brain health in intensive care units. Instead of being trained on text, the system is based on electroencephalogram (EEG) data, which is collected via electrodes placed on the scalp and then read out by a computer in a series of wavy lines. EEG records the brain's electrical activity--and changes in this activity can indicate a problem. In an ICU setting, doctors scan EEG data looking for evidence of seizures, altered consciousness, or a decline in brain function. Currently, doctors rely on continuous EEG monitoring to detect abnormal brain activity in an ICU patient, but they can't monitor every individual patient in real time.

It's one of America's best hospitals -- a nonprofit "academic medical center" called the Cleveland Clinic. And this week it installed an IBM-managed quantum computer to accelerate healthcare research (according to an announcement from IBM). IBM is calling it "the first quantum computer in the world to be uniquely dedicated to healthcare research." The clinic's CEO said the technology "holds tremendous promise in revolutionizing healthcare and expediting progress toward new cares, cures and solutions for patients." IBM's CEO added that "By combining the power of quantum computing, artificial intelligence and other next-generation technologies with Cleveland Clinic's world-renowned leadership in healthcare and life sciences, we hope to ignite a new era of accelerated discovery."

The Center for Computational Life Sciences at Cleveland Clinic offers an opportunity for a visionary Senior Faculty to establish our biomedical research and healthcare system as a global leader in Artificial Intelligence Research (AI). This Senior Faculty position will shape and expand AI technologies and applications centered around biomedical science and healthcare, supported by strong institutional commitment to build their vision. The Center for Computational Life Sciences will serve as a multi-institutional hub for collaborative research in computational life sciences and biomedicine positioned at the intersection of modern biology, computer science, predictive modeling, simulation, and AI. Cleveland Clinic's electronic health record (EHR) is one of the largest in the world, containing data on over 7 million patient lives. Multi omics data go back well over 20 years, comprised of over billions of data points.

"Our commitment is to provide the best possible care for our patients, and it is increasingly clear that AI-powered pathology can radically enhance diagnostic accuracy and treatment selection." PathAI and Cleveland Clinic have announced a 5 year strategic collaboration. The partnership will combine PathAI's AI-based platforms with Cleveland Clinic's clinical expertise and multi-modal data to unlock a broad implementation of next-generation pathology diagnostics. The objective is to accelerate innovation in precision pathology and to bridge communities in the healthcare ecosystem including patients, biopharma, and academic research. Cleveland Clinic will leverage PathAI's quantitative pathology algorithms to conduct new translational research and for use as clinical diagnostics in multiple disease areas.

By now, everyone understands the potential of AI in healthcare, especially in our fight against COVID-19. But because of the nature of the emerging technology, it has also thrown up some major questions that no single tech or healthcare provider can solve on their own. So, Microsoft is bringing together leading public, private, educational and research organizations across the U.S. healthcare and life sciences industries to form the Artificial Intelligence Industry Innovation Coalition (AI3C). The coalition list includes the top names from healthcare and technology, including Brookings Institution, Cleveland Clinic, Duke Health, Intermountain Healthcare, Novant Health, Plug and Play, Providence, UC San Diego, and the University of Virginia. "We at Providence feel that the responsible and equitable implementation of AI will be a critical element of healthcare transformation [to] achieve our vision of Health for a Better World. We applaud Microsoft for bringing this coalition together and are excited to partner with these esteemed institutions to drive progress on how AI can be a force multiplier for good in healthcare," said Brett MacLaren, chief data officer at Providence.

Cognitive disorders, including dementia, are increasingly being reported as a complication of the highly contagious SARS-CoV-2 virus that causes Covid-19, researchers behind the recent study at the Cleveland Clinic in Ohio have revealed. "Reports of neurological complications in Covid-19 patients and'long-hauler' patients whose symptoms persist after the infection clears are becoming more common, suggesting that [the virus] may have lasting effects on brain function," said the authors of the study, which was published this week in the journal Alzheimer's Research & Therapy. The researchers' aim was to uncover the mechanisms responsible for brain-associated complications such as delirium and the loss of taste or smell that are often found in novel coronavirus patients. In order to do so, they compared on a molecular level the host genes of Covid-19 and those responsible for some neurological disorders. Having collected the data of both Covid-19 patients and people suffering from Alzheimer's disease, they used artificial intelligence to measure the proximity between them.

The U.K. government and IBM this week announced a five-year £210 million ($297.5 million) artificial intelligence (AI) and quantum computing collaboration, in the hopes of making new discoveries and developing sustainable technologies in fields ranging from life sciences to manufacturing. The program will hire 60 scientists, as well as bringing in interns and students to work under the auspices of IBM Research and the U.K.'s Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC) at the Hartree Centre in Daresbury, Cheshire. The newly formed Hartree National Centre for Digital Innovation (HNCDI) will "apply AI, high performance computing (HPC) and data analytics, quantum computing, and cloud technologies" to advance research in areas like materials development and environmental sustainability, IBM said in a statement. "Artificial intelligence and quantum computing have the potential to revolutionize everything from the way we travel to the way we shop. They are exactly the kind of fields I want the U.K. to be leading in," U.K. Science Minister Amanda Solloway said.

When the Covid-19 pandemic emerged last year, physician Lara Jehi and her colleagues at the Cleveland Clinic were running blind. Who were the patients likely to get sicker? What kinds of care will they need? "The questions were endless," says Jehi, the clinic's chief research information officer. "We didn't have the luxury of time to wait and see what's going to evolve over time."

As COVID-19 continues to spread throughout the world, particularly with cases rising during what some have termed the "fall surge," repurposing drugs already approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for new therapeutic purposes continues to be the most efficient and cost-effective approach to treat or prevent the disease. According to the findings published today in PLOS Biology, a novel artificial intelligence platform developed by Lerner Research Institute researchers to identify possible drugs for COVID-19 repurposing has revealed melatonin as a promising candidate. Analysis of patient data from Cleveland Clinic's COVID-19 registry also revealed that melatonin usage was associated with a nearly 30 percent reduced likelihood of testing positive for SARS-CoV-2 (the virus that causes COVID-19) after adjusting for age, race, smoking history and various disease comorbidities. Notably, the reduced likelihood of testing positive for the virus increased from 30 to 52 percent for African Americans when adjusted for the same variables. "It is very important to note these findings do not suggest people should start to take melatonin without consulting their physician," said Feixiong Cheng, Ph.D., assistant staff in Cleveland Clinic's Genomic Medicine Institute and lead author on the study.

RALEIGH – A startup in Raleigh backed by investor and Sprout Pharmaceuticals CEO Cindy Eckert, is unveiling Thursday a different approach to dealing with Alzheimer's that is powered by artificial intelligence, not drugs. And its solution is part of a new effort launched by the Women's Alzheimer's Movement Prevention Center at Cleveland Clinic, an internationally respected medical institution. ExtND is among the offerings from the Women's Alzheimer's center, which also was unveiled today in Las Vegas, according to a spokesperson for uMETHOD. Several medical institutions already are deploying the method. More than 5 million people are currently afflicted with Alzheimer's and the disease is the sixth leading cause of death in the US, according to the Alzheimer's Assocation.