Paul De Sousa, head of life sciences at Massive Analytic and former researcher at Edinburgh University, writes about a study using artificial precognition AI to analyse results of protein biomarker tests associated with Alzheimer's disease progression. Accounting for over 30 million Disability Adjusted Life Years worldwide, Alzheimer's disease (AD) is a global societal challenge and a threat to healthcare systems around the world. A long history of failures of AD drug trials has highlighted the need for early detection and diagnosis to support patients and clinicians to implement the best life adjustments or medical interventions to alter the course of the disease and personalise the care of those at risk. Biomarkers are measurable indicators of the biological conditions of health, on which disease prognosis and diagnosis is founded. In AD there are a range of diagnostic procedures to detect these biomarkers including testing Cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) and PET scans for markers of amyloid-β and tau that can accurately detect AD pathology, but their cost and invasive nature preclude the broad accessibility required for early detection.

LONDON, UK – March 17, 2016 – Massive Analytic Limited, an Artificial Intelligence pioneer, has been awarded a contract with the Ministry of Defence (MOD) through the Defence Science and Technology Laboratory's Centre for Defence Enterprise (CDE) to develop technologies for "autonomy and big data in defence". The contract was won as part of the largest ever competition run by CDE. It called for a proof-of-concept research proposal for innovative component technologies and techniques to acquire, process, analyse and visualise data to support decision making by both humans and autonomous systems. In its winning submission, Massive Analytic proposed a novel big data analytics platform for operational tactical planning and support, using persistent surveillance and its own patented artificial precognition, the brain behind its analytics platform, Oscar. The system will bring together multiple static and dynamic surveillance data sources, outputting predictions with high degrees of accuracy.

A big data analytics platform is being deployed by the Ministry of Defence as it looks to take the weight of military analysts and improve threat identification. The analytics platform, which incorporates machine learning technology, will be used for operational support and comes from a recently signed contract by the Defence Science and Technology Laboratory's Centre for Defence Enterprise (CDE) and Massive Analytic, a London based company. The idea behind the platform from Massive Analytic is that it will help make it possible to examine outcomes of decisions before they are put into effect, effectively acting as a trusted advisor. Under the deployment the MoD will use the system to bring together surveillance data from static and dynamic sources which will feed an interactive dashboard. The dashboard will be capable of providing insights that will help to identify threats in advance and can be used for planning different scenarios. Military analysts are currently the main source for sifting through large volumes of data, it is hoped that this platform will help to remove some of that burden.