tisdag 5 november 2019

There is gold in data – if we mine it right

Bernd Montag, CEO på Siemens Healthineers bevistade det nyligen avslutade World Health Summit
i Berlin där han deltog tillsammans med prominenser från världens alla hörn. 

Ur programförklaringen :
October 22, 2019
The World Health Summit will begin on Sunday, with approximately 20 ministers from around the world in attendance
Approximately 20 ministers from around the world are expected to attend the World Health Summit, which begins on Sunday. Joining them will be the Director-General of the WHO, top scientists, and leading NGO representatives. At the three-day summit, over 2,500 participants will discuss ways to improve global health.
World Health Summit President Detlev Ganten shares his perspective on the summit and current global health challenges.

October 24, 2019
Special Events at the World Health Summit
The World Health Summit, one of the world’s leading strategic forums for global health, will begin on Sunday. Special events include the opening ceremony, a press conference on climate change and health, a press event on AI and health, Entrepreneurs in Global Health startup presentations, and a photo exhibition from the Wellcome Photography Prize 2019.

October 27, 2019
World Health Summit 2019 kicks off in Berlin
The 11th World Health Summit began today, with approximately 1,300 participants from science, politics, the private sector, and civil society around the world. At the opening ceremony Sunday evening, German Health Minister Jens Spahn said: “We want to make the European voice in global health heard. The role of the EU in international fora, such as the World Health Organization, must be increased.”


Efter dessa dagar med tal om kommande årens hälsoutmaningar och lösningar sammanfattade VD:n på Siemens Healthineers sin syn på framtiden och vad som kommer vara de viktigaste komponenterna för att nå framgång. 
Ur den texten lyfter jag fram en rubrik.

                              There is gold in data – if we mine it right

Hela texten från Bernd Montag :

The best of all possible worlds



If you could have chosen the time of your birth, would you have selected today? It would have been a sensible choice. Humanity has never been as healthy, as prosperous, and as well-educated as it is today. We all have good reason to look to the future with confidence. This was the tenor of the World Health Summit in Berlin, where I had the opportunity to meet many people with their inspiring ideas: physicians, politicians, investors, and decision-makers from all over the world, who work passionately and expertly on ways to democratize healthcare.

Humanity has made great strides forward in the fight against mortality, poverty, and hunger. The average life expectancy worldwide has risen from 59 to 72 years old since my birth alone. In just one generation, we have been able to cut the number of people living in extreme poverty by two thirds. Child mortality has shrunk by fifty percent within the same period. And while nearly one in seven people on the planet were undernourished at the turn of the millennium, this figure is now one in ten today. Which is still too many.

We do not live in the best of all possible worlds, and we continue to face herculean challenges. Infectious diseases remain the most common cause of death in the sub-Saharan countries. The African continent alone lacks 1.5 million doctors, midwives, and caregivers, and this figure is as much as 4.3 million worldwide. Hope in our industry is high. People expect us to make solutions available that are affordable and accessible, while making both diagnoses and treatments more precise.



There is gold in data – if we mine it right

I think that digitalization in medicine is the most powerful tool to achieve this goal. Innovations such as the stethoscope, disinfecting agents, anesthesia, and X-rays have fundamentally changed medicine in the past. We now have the opportunity to take the next big leap forward by digitalizing healthcare. Our technological progress generates more and more data. Every year, the global quantity of health data increases by 48 percent. If we could load this data (currently amounting to approximately 2,000 exabytes) onto tablets, the stack of tablets would reach one third of the way to the moon.

For physicians, real gold nuggets are hidden within this data. To mine them, we need algorithms that have far more advanced pattern recognition capabilities than humans. This artificial intelligence (AI) must be well trained for medical applications, since we are talking about human lives and not AI-based hotel or restaurant tips. Such digital assistants can support doctors, for example in performing administrative tasks or routine activities. They already relieve radiologists’ workloads when it comes to assessing CT and MRI images and help physicians make decisions.

At the same time, digital tools give people more autonomy and let them take more responsibility for their own health. Telemedicine and AI-based apps bring medical advice to rural areas and threshold countries, where doctors are often in short supply. This requires a good infrastructure. A number of large technology companies are working on solutions for the 3.8 billion people who still lack access to the Internet, for example by building a network of satellites that offer the Internet from outer space.

Medicine without AI is like an airplane without autopilot

I am continuously fascinated by the way that innovations arise from pure necessity. With digitalization, some threshold countries have managed to skip technological developments instead of reproducing them, so that they catch up faster. Drone technology is a prime example of this leapfrogging approach. While commercial logistics applications are not very common for this technology, Rwanda and Ghana are furnishing them. In these countries, doctors can order medical goods via their mobile phones and have them delivered by drone. This could be a model for supplying rural areas in other nations.
With all the technological advances, however, we should not assume that medical devices and AI alone can improve healthcare. People who are able to use the technology are crucial. Humans and digital assistants are particularly effective only as a team – in medicine as in aviation, where it is impossible to imagine a cockpit without autopilot. The training, networking, and, not least, the appreciation of medical specialists are therefore additional priorities.

Once again, the World Health Summit showed me how much innovative power we will unleash if we work together across national, industry, and company boundaries. We are united by the ethical obligation to enable all people to access modern healthcare and transform care delivery. This is one step forward to a better world.

Inga kommentarer:

Skicka en kommentar