This week's opinion piece is from technology influencer and futurist Dr Sarah-Jayne Gratton The latest statistics around breast cancer send a stark reminder of just how important early detection is in combating this brutal disease. With revolutionary strides forward in Artificial Intelligence (AI) all that looks set to change for the better. One of the leading causes of death for cancer patients is a late diagnosis, too often brought about by inferior testing facilities, human factors, such as fatigue and loss of concentration, or by the patients themselves, who put off seeing a specialist due to the fear of what they might discover. But now, thanks to nothing short of revolutionary strides forward in Artificial Intelligence (AI) all that looks set to change for the better. AI is capable of advanced learning using large complex datasets and has the potential to perform tasks such as image interpretation.

Breast cancer awareness month is here and, with it, the latest statistics send a stark reminder of just how important early detection is in combating this brutal disease. With revolutionary strides forward in Artificial Intelligence (AI) all that looks set to change for the better. One of the leading causes of death for cancer patients is a late diagnosis, too often brought about by inferior testing facilities, human factors, such as fatigue and loss of concentration, or by the patients themselves, who put off seeing a specialist due to the fear of what they might discover. But now, thanks to nothing short of revolutionary strides forward in Artificial Intelligence (AI) all that looks set to change for the better. AI is capable of advanced learning using large complex datasets and has the potential to perform tasks such as image interpretation.

Today, I am going to deliver some kind of educational content. If you are still unaware about the advantages that Skychain has over the competitors, this presentation material is for you. I would like to start by underlining the key idea of our project once again -- bringing the key players together within blockchain infrastructure. The whole message is being a cornerstone since the conception of the project. But what is so important and unique in doing it?

A blockchain-based platform which bills itself as the "future of artificial intelligence (AI) in healthcare" is preparing to launch an alpha version of its infrastructure within weeks. Skychain believes its diagnostics system – a "distributed open network" of artificial neural networks (or ANNs for short) – can identify conditions in patients and prescribe appropriate treatments in milliseconds, substantially reducing the risk of human error during the crucial diagnosis stage. By June, the company says early participants including hospitals, medical AI developers and healthcare data providers will have access to a "fully built" ecosystem. It hopes to welcome dozens more participants in the second half of this year – and by the time a beta version is released in December, Skychain believes "more and more neural networks and ready-made datasets" will become available. Skychain wants all of its plans to be "completely realized" by next summer, when it plans to officially launch – paving the way for it to become "a leader in the medical AI market."

Skychain is an infrastructure blockchain project aimed to host, train and use artificial neural networks (ANNs) by market participants. First years of Skychain development will be devoted only to medicine to help doctors and patients have accurate diagnoses using this system. Skychain is a "sharing economy" project, it means that each member of the Skychain ecosystem will provide his resources and thus create a product that is ahead of any competitors. In its turn, the system will reward each participant with high benefits. Skychain is a project that will "uberize" artificial neural networks, but with developers of individual ANNs instead of taxi drivers, consumers of ANNs (doctors and patients) instead of passengers and computers and server of miners instead of cars.

Skychain Global, for the first time in Russia, has successfully conducted a test of the artificial intelligence system for medical diagnostics, comparing the number of errors committed by the living doctors. This infrastructure blockchain project is aimed at helping doctors and patients have accurate diagnoses. Interestingly, this is the first ever test of its kind to be conducted in Russia. An infrastructure blockchain project, Skychain is dedicated to providing an infrastructure to radically increase the efficiency of healthcare AI development and training. There is no denying the fact that the field of medical sciences has experienced significant progress over the years.

Since its creation, artificial intelligence (AI) has found use in many different industries, including healthcare. The amount of medical data is astronomically huge and the problem of systematizing, storing, and, above all, using such data is of the utmost importance. People have long hoped that someday, computers will make accurate diagnoses and eliminate medical errors. But no one has created an effective AI doctor yet. The Skychain project promises to revolutionize the healthcare industry, using AI and blockchain technology.