Autonomy excels at analyzing the vast amounts of "unstructured data" being produced every day.
Tom Simonite Technology Review (by MIT) Thursday, August 18, 2011
News broke today that HP, the world's biggest manufacturer of personal computers, had offered to acquire the British software company Autonomy. While the latter is hardly a household name, it gets close to $1 billion in revenue each year from software that can turn huge volumes of images, text, and video into useful statistics and insights for businesses.
Acquiring that technology will enable HP to expand its business software products, and put it in a good position to exploit a trend dubbed "big data." Businesses are increasingly interested in finding ways to distill meaning from the growing piles of digital information, from tweets to video, flowing through our lives at work and at home.
Whit Andrews, a vice president and analyst with Gartner who specializes in technology that processes and organizes information, says that Autonomy was years ahead of other companies in making such analysis possible. "They have had this vision for over a decade that there was immense value in being able to do statistical analysis for data like audio and video that conventional technology cannot handle."
Autonomy's products enable companies to do things like analyze transcripts from call centers; discover which sales strategies work best; and process troves of e-mails and other documents to match whether what is being said and done comports with a company's legal responsibilities. Such analysis can be automated using software that looks for certain things automatically, or performed manually by a person entering queries, and then sifting through the results themselves.
Andrews says business and technology companies are beginning to realize that both types of analysis could offer much more than conventional approaches, which rely on so-called "structured" data, such as a spreadsheet organized into labelled columns. "Business analytics is about structured data, like spreadsheets," says Andrews. "Autonomy does an exceptional job at analyzing unstructured data, which may prove even more valuable."
In an interview with Technology Review published last year, Autonomy's founder and CEO, Mike Lynch, estimated that about 85 percent of the information inside a business is unstructured. "[W]e are human beings, and unstructured information is at the core of everything we do," he said. "Most business is done using this kind of human-friendly information."
Lynch founded the company to commercialize statistical techniques developed at Cambridge University based on Bayesian inference, a mathematical technique that can estimate the probability of potential outcomes based on previous evidence.
Companies like IBM are working hard on their own approaches to analyzing unstructured data, but Autonomy has been at it for longer, says Andrews. Acquiring the company could enable HP to take a much more dominant position in the growing market for what Autonomy's Lynch dubs "meaning-based computing."
Monday, August 22, 2011
4G a boon to U.S. economy and jobs, study says
Roger Cheng CNet News August 21, 2011 9:01 PM PDT
The wireless carriers' investment in 4G networks could be the salve that the ailing U.S. economy is looking for.
The carriers could invest between $25 billion and $53 billion in building out their 4G network through 2016, according to a study from Deloitte. That in turn could lead to the creation of 371,000 to 771,000 jobs, and gross domestic product growth of $73 billion to $151 billion.
"Investment in such a powerful form of communication contributes to the economic recovery and provides a job-creating engine for the future," said Phil Asmundson a consultant for Deloitte.
The rise of 4G networks could provide some support for an economy still struggling to recover, and which some believe is slipping back into a recession. The recent bitter political struggle to raise the national debt ceiling, the sharp declines in the stock market, and the continued high rate of unemployment have many still concerned.
The wide-ranging estimate assumes two different scenarios. The baseline scenario has the carriers deploying 4G technology at a moderate pace with a slow transition from 3G to 4G extending into the middle of the decade. Deloitte warns that under these conditions, the U.S. firms will be vulnerable to foreign competitors looking to jump ahead in the 4G race.
The second scenario predicts a more rapid investment in 4G networks and the creation of 4G-based services before global competitors gain momentum. Deloitte said the demand stimulated by the new services would propel more network investment, "setting off a virtuous cycle of investment and market response." Cloud services are among the primary catalysts for investment, according to Deloitte.
Telecommunications investment has remained strong over the past few years, with large companies such as AT&T and Verizon pouring money into network upgrades. AT&T has argued that its acquisition of T-Mobile would lead to new jobs and investment because it is able to expand its future 4G network across a wider stretch of the country. Chief Executive Randall Stephenson has long argued that investment in telecommunications technology is crucial to staying ahead in the world.
AT&T plans to launch its first 4G LTE markets later this summer.
Verizon, meanwhile, has spent billions of dollars upgrading its fixed-line infrastructure with fiber-optic lines to deliver television content and faster Internet service. On the wireless side, the company has been racing to build out its 4G LTE network, and recently said that it covers more than half the country.
Clearwire is also switching gears from its current 4G WiMax standard and moving toward LTE, but the company said it plans to spend only $600 million for the upgrade.
Clearwire's largest customer and shareholder, Sprint Nextel, is planning to unveil its 4G plans in October. The company has already signed a network-hosting deal with LightSquared, which plans to start testing its 4G network with customers next year.
The widespread adoption of 4G services should also help certain segments such as disadvantaged minority groups; rural communities and areas with limited full broadband access; and small businesses, the firm said, adding the advent of 4G could work to bring those groups further into the economic mainstream.
Read more: http://news.cnet.com/8301-1035_3-20094588-94/4g-a-boon-to-u.s-economy-and-jobs-study-says/#ixzz1VleV8J20
The wireless carriers' investment in 4G networks could be the salve that the ailing U.S. economy is looking for.
The carriers could invest between $25 billion and $53 billion in building out their 4G network through 2016, according to a study from Deloitte. That in turn could lead to the creation of 371,000 to 771,000 jobs, and gross domestic product growth of $73 billion to $151 billion.
"Investment in such a powerful form of communication contributes to the economic recovery and provides a job-creating engine for the future," said Phil Asmundson a consultant for Deloitte.
The rise of 4G networks could provide some support for an economy still struggling to recover, and which some believe is slipping back into a recession. The recent bitter political struggle to raise the national debt ceiling, the sharp declines in the stock market, and the continued high rate of unemployment have many still concerned.
The wide-ranging estimate assumes two different scenarios. The baseline scenario has the carriers deploying 4G technology at a moderate pace with a slow transition from 3G to 4G extending into the middle of the decade. Deloitte warns that under these conditions, the U.S. firms will be vulnerable to foreign competitors looking to jump ahead in the 4G race.
The second scenario predicts a more rapid investment in 4G networks and the creation of 4G-based services before global competitors gain momentum. Deloitte said the demand stimulated by the new services would propel more network investment, "setting off a virtuous cycle of investment and market response." Cloud services are among the primary catalysts for investment, according to Deloitte.
Telecommunications investment has remained strong over the past few years, with large companies such as AT&T and Verizon pouring money into network upgrades. AT&T has argued that its acquisition of T-Mobile would lead to new jobs and investment because it is able to expand its future 4G network across a wider stretch of the country. Chief Executive Randall Stephenson has long argued that investment in telecommunications technology is crucial to staying ahead in the world.
AT&T plans to launch its first 4G LTE markets later this summer.
Verizon, meanwhile, has spent billions of dollars upgrading its fixed-line infrastructure with fiber-optic lines to deliver television content and faster Internet service. On the wireless side, the company has been racing to build out its 4G LTE network, and recently said that it covers more than half the country.
Clearwire is also switching gears from its current 4G WiMax standard and moving toward LTE, but the company said it plans to spend only $600 million for the upgrade.
Clearwire's largest customer and shareholder, Sprint Nextel, is planning to unveil its 4G plans in October. The company has already signed a network-hosting deal with LightSquared, which plans to start testing its 4G network with customers next year.
The widespread adoption of 4G services should also help certain segments such as disadvantaged minority groups; rural communities and areas with limited full broadband access; and small businesses, the firm said, adding the advent of 4G could work to bring those groups further into the economic mainstream.
Read more: http://news.cnet.com/8301-1035_3-20094588-94/4g-a-boon-to-u.s-economy-and-jobs-study-says/#ixzz1VleV8J20
Friday, August 19, 2011
Computer Analysis Could Find New Uses for Existing Drugs
I HealthBeat August 18, 011
A computer program that analyzes drug data and genetic information could help discover new uses for medicines already on the market, according to two new studies published in the journal Science Translational Medicine, United Press International reports.
Methodology
For the NIH-funded research, Stanford University scientists extracted data from NIH's Gene Expression Omnibus, a public database containing findings from thousands of genomic studies conducted throughout the world.
Researchers focused on 100 diseases and 164 drugs. They analyzed thousands of possible drug-disease combinations to identify which medications and medical conditions had gene expression patterns that could cancel each other out. Such matches indicate that the drug potentially could mitigate the effects of the disease (United Press International, 8/17).
Research Findings
Researchers identified possible drug-disease matches for 53 of the 100 diseases analyzed (Renick, Bloomberg, 8/17).
For example, they found that an epilepsy treatment potentially could treat inflammatory bowel disease and that an ulcer drug might be an effective lung cancer medication (Dockser Marcus, Wall Street Journal, 8/18).
Possible Implications
Researchers noted that re-purposing existing medications to treat different diseases could reduce some of the costs and requirements involved in the drug development process. They noted that it takes an average of 15 years and about $1 billion to bring a single new drug to market (Bloomberg, 8/17).
In an accompanying commentary on the research, Yves Lussier -- a professor of medicine and engineering at the University of Illinois in Chicago -- wrote that the findings should not prompt physicians to prescribe an ulcer drug to treat lung cancer. However, he added that the findings are "impressive enough to be improved upon and studied further."
Lussier also noted that if the computer program is effective at detecting possible off-label uses for existing drugs, it "opens the door to very low-cost, individualized personal therapies" (Wall Street Journal, 8/18).
Read more: http://www.ihealthbeat.org/articles/2011/8/18/computer-analysis-could-find-new-uses-for-existing-drugs.aspx#ixzz1VTsrgrjJ
A computer program that analyzes drug data and genetic information could help discover new uses for medicines already on the market, according to two new studies published in the journal Science Translational Medicine, United Press International reports.
Methodology
For the NIH-funded research, Stanford University scientists extracted data from NIH's Gene Expression Omnibus, a public database containing findings from thousands of genomic studies conducted throughout the world.
Researchers focused on 100 diseases and 164 drugs. They analyzed thousands of possible drug-disease combinations to identify which medications and medical conditions had gene expression patterns that could cancel each other out. Such matches indicate that the drug potentially could mitigate the effects of the disease (United Press International, 8/17).
Research Findings
Researchers identified possible drug-disease matches for 53 of the 100 diseases analyzed (Renick, Bloomberg, 8/17).
For example, they found that an epilepsy treatment potentially could treat inflammatory bowel disease and that an ulcer drug might be an effective lung cancer medication (Dockser Marcus, Wall Street Journal, 8/18).
Possible Implications
Researchers noted that re-purposing existing medications to treat different diseases could reduce some of the costs and requirements involved in the drug development process. They noted that it takes an average of 15 years and about $1 billion to bring a single new drug to market (Bloomberg, 8/17).
In an accompanying commentary on the research, Yves Lussier -- a professor of medicine and engineering at the University of Illinois in Chicago -- wrote that the findings should not prompt physicians to prescribe an ulcer drug to treat lung cancer. However, he added that the findings are "impressive enough to be improved upon and studied further."
Lussier also noted that if the computer program is effective at detecting possible off-label uses for existing drugs, it "opens the door to very low-cost, individualized personal therapies" (Wall Street Journal, 8/18).
Read more: http://www.ihealthbeat.org/articles/2011/8/18/computer-analysis-could-find-new-uses-for-existing-drugs.aspx#ixzz1VTsrgrjJ
Tuesday, August 16, 2011
The web turns twenty
Difference Engine: Happy anniversary?
Aug 12th 2011, 10:37 by N.V. | LOS ANGELES
IT IS always a little disconcerting to realise a generation has grown up never knowing what it was like to manage without something that is taken for granted today. A case in point: the World Wide Web (WWW), which celebrated the 20th anniversary of its introduction last Saturday. It is no exaggeration to say that not since the invention of the printing press has a new media technology altered the way people think, work and play quite so extensively. With the web having been so thoroughly embraced socially, politically and economically, the world has become an entirely different place from what it was just two decades ago. Whether the web has made it a better place or a worse one is for readers to decide.
It was on August 6th, 1991, that Tim Berners-Lee, a British physicist at the European Organisation for Nuclear Research (CERN), in Geneva, created the first-ever web page—a summary of his WWW project along with explanations to help visitors build websites of their own and to search the web for information. No screen-shots survive of the original web page; its original address simply redirects visitors to a contemporary site providing details of the project’s early days at CERN.
First, however, a few things to get straight. The web is not to be confused with the internet—a global system of interconnected networks developed in the 1960s, originally for academic and government researchers in America. The internet sends information as discrete packets of data using a suite of protocols known as TCP/IP. The genius of the system is that the data tell the network where they want to go, instead of the network telling the data where they are being sent. All networks adopting this procedure—no matter where they are or how they actually function—are then reduced effectively to the same bare essentials, allowing them to interconnect and exchange data seamlessly.
The web, by contrast, is simply a way of organising information on a computer network by means of “hyperlinks”—ie, references to other resources on the network that users can visit directly from the document they are reading. As conceived, the web is simply another service—albeit a very important one—running on top of the internet.
Apart from coming up with the idea for sharing information embedded with hypertext links over the internet, to make it happen Mr Berners-Lee (subsequently knighted for his efforts) had to create the first web browser-editor, the first web server, and the first version of the hypertext mark-up language (HTML), which would become the primary means for publishing information on the web. Within a year or two of the web’s introduction, software packages such as Viola, Cello and Mosaic had made it possible for users to browse the web graphically—by clicking on highlighted hyperlinks in web pages and being redirected to yet other web pages, and so on.
It is fair to say that, without the internet, the web would not have existed—at least, not in the form we know it today. And without the web, the internet would have remained essentially a tool for geeks and professionals. No doubt, e-mail would have continued to flourish without the web: it was one of the internet’s earliest applications. So would news groups, bulletin boards, instant messaging and listservs. In due course, internet telephony applications like Skype and even streaming video services similar to Hulu or YouTube would have emerged as well. But users would have had to master the vagaries of Archie, Finger, Gopher, Telnet, Veronica and WAIS (don’t even ask). Thanks to the web’s ease of navigation and the richness of its HTML formatting language, most of these arcane internet tools have gone the way of the dodo.
No question that, over the past 20 years, the web has brought numerous benefits. But it has had its dark side, too. Cybercrime has become prevalent as thieves, hucksters, predators, child pornographers, terrorists, drug cartels and even foreign powers have used the anonymity of the so-called “deep web” to perpetrate crimes. In his pioneering study in 2001, Michael Bergman, a semantics-search-engine whiz based in Iowa, reckoned there was 400 to 550 times more information lurking underground in the deep web than on the surface in the public web. Information in the deep web lay hidden from Google’s crawlers by residing behind password-protected firewalls or requiring admission forms to be completed manually to gain access. By Mr Bergman’s estimate, the deep web contained some 7,500 terabytes of information, compared with a mere 19 terabytes in the public web at the time. Put another way, search engines were indexing less than 0.25% of the web pages available.
Things are probably no different today. By and large, though, the bulk of information in such hidden repositories is legitimate, stashed there by private companies, research institutions and government agencies for security reasons. “There’s a lot or legitimate and valuable content in the deep web,” says Juliana Freire, the former leader of a University of Utah project called DeepPeep. Even so, the fact that there is vastly more information on the web that is inaccessible, compared with what is open to public view, gives one pause for thought.
On balance, the world is grateful for what the web has wrought. Despite their cavalier attitudes to privacy, websites like Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr and Foursquare have changed the way a whole generation of people communicates—creating new ways to make friends, find old acquaintances, socialise online and pursue common interests. Business sites like LinkedIn help them further their careers. YouTube and Flickr let enthusiasts share their home videos and snap shots with millions of others. Online dating sites such as Match, with its algorithms for compatibility, have fostered meaningful relationships for many a lonely heart.
From Amazon to Zappos, online retailing sites have taken the drudgery out of shopping, allowing goods to be bought with the click of a mouse at home. E-Bay lets people sell those they no longer want. Meanwhile, music-streaming sites like Spotify have opened millions of ears to melodies they might never otherwise have heard.
At a keystroke, it has become possible to find all sorts of obscure information, thanks to Google, Bing, Ask and other search engines. Wikipedia may not be the most reliable of sources, but at least it provides a quick run-down on practically anything you need to know in a hurry. Compared with printed encyclopaedias and public libraries, the web has democratised the collected wisdom of ages, and redistributed it in a way unimaginable a few decades ago. Meanwhile, people no longer have to wait for newspapers to be delivered in the morning, or for broadcasters to assemble their news shows. Web pages, tweets and blogs deliver the news as it happens.
Few would deny that such services have made the world a smarter, livelier, more interesting place. But while the news travels faster than ever courtesy of the web, so do lies, hyperbole and distortions. All those with access to the web now have a voice to air their grievances, vent their anger, parade their biases, push the boundaries of decency, spill the beans. The gatekeepers have gone.
When WikiLeaks dumps massive volumes of diplomatic correspondence stolen from government computers on its website, it is not engaging in some heroic act of free speech, nor bringing specific cases of wrongdoing to the public’s attention. In a deliberate and calculated manner, it is making the world a more dangerous place. In dealing with issues of privacy, public safety and national security, governments have every right to discuss such matters behind closed doors—indeed, we insist they do. It is dangerously naïve to argue otherwise.
Meanwhile, for every online job the web has created, several others have been lost in the bricks-and-mortar world. And unlike the latter, many of the new online jobs lie beyond a country’s shores. Likewise, for all the new freedoms and certainties the web has created, numerous old ones have disappeared. Consider copyright. Once it provided authors, artists and musicians with a living, and ensured that the fourth estate could do its job of rooting out injustice and corruption. Illegal downloading from the web, and the widespread erosion of copyright protection generally, has put paid to much of that.
You have to wonder whether something is wrong when so many people spend so much of their time these days in front of a computer screen tapping away on a keyboard, instead of going out into the real world to experience life’s actual (as opposed to virtual) adventures. Ironically, for all the labour-saving tools the web has given us, and all the personal connections it has allowed us to make, we seem to have become lonelier and more isolated than ever. That is a rather sorry state of affairs.
Aug 12th 2011, 10:37 by N.V. | LOS ANGELES
IT IS always a little disconcerting to realise a generation has grown up never knowing what it was like to manage without something that is taken for granted today. A case in point: the World Wide Web (WWW), which celebrated the 20th anniversary of its introduction last Saturday. It is no exaggeration to say that not since the invention of the printing press has a new media technology altered the way people think, work and play quite so extensively. With the web having been so thoroughly embraced socially, politically and economically, the world has become an entirely different place from what it was just two decades ago. Whether the web has made it a better place or a worse one is for readers to decide.
It was on August 6th, 1991, that Tim Berners-Lee, a British physicist at the European Organisation for Nuclear Research (CERN), in Geneva, created the first-ever web page—a summary of his WWW project along with explanations to help visitors build websites of their own and to search the web for information. No screen-shots survive of the original web page; its original address simply redirects visitors to a contemporary site providing details of the project’s early days at CERN.
First, however, a few things to get straight. The web is not to be confused with the internet—a global system of interconnected networks developed in the 1960s, originally for academic and government researchers in America. The internet sends information as discrete packets of data using a suite of protocols known as TCP/IP. The genius of the system is that the data tell the network where they want to go, instead of the network telling the data where they are being sent. All networks adopting this procedure—no matter where they are or how they actually function—are then reduced effectively to the same bare essentials, allowing them to interconnect and exchange data seamlessly.
The web, by contrast, is simply a way of organising information on a computer network by means of “hyperlinks”—ie, references to other resources on the network that users can visit directly from the document they are reading. As conceived, the web is simply another service—albeit a very important one—running on top of the internet.
Apart from coming up with the idea for sharing information embedded with hypertext links over the internet, to make it happen Mr Berners-Lee (subsequently knighted for his efforts) had to create the first web browser-editor, the first web server, and the first version of the hypertext mark-up language (HTML), which would become the primary means for publishing information on the web. Within a year or two of the web’s introduction, software packages such as Viola, Cello and Mosaic had made it possible for users to browse the web graphically—by clicking on highlighted hyperlinks in web pages and being redirected to yet other web pages, and so on.
It is fair to say that, without the internet, the web would not have existed—at least, not in the form we know it today. And without the web, the internet would have remained essentially a tool for geeks and professionals. No doubt, e-mail would have continued to flourish without the web: it was one of the internet’s earliest applications. So would news groups, bulletin boards, instant messaging and listservs. In due course, internet telephony applications like Skype and even streaming video services similar to Hulu or YouTube would have emerged as well. But users would have had to master the vagaries of Archie, Finger, Gopher, Telnet, Veronica and WAIS (don’t even ask). Thanks to the web’s ease of navigation and the richness of its HTML formatting language, most of these arcane internet tools have gone the way of the dodo.
No question that, over the past 20 years, the web has brought numerous benefits. But it has had its dark side, too. Cybercrime has become prevalent as thieves, hucksters, predators, child pornographers, terrorists, drug cartels and even foreign powers have used the anonymity of the so-called “deep web” to perpetrate crimes. In his pioneering study in 2001, Michael Bergman, a semantics-search-engine whiz based in Iowa, reckoned there was 400 to 550 times more information lurking underground in the deep web than on the surface in the public web. Information in the deep web lay hidden from Google’s crawlers by residing behind password-protected firewalls or requiring admission forms to be completed manually to gain access. By Mr Bergman’s estimate, the deep web contained some 7,500 terabytes of information, compared with a mere 19 terabytes in the public web at the time. Put another way, search engines were indexing less than 0.25% of the web pages available.
Things are probably no different today. By and large, though, the bulk of information in such hidden repositories is legitimate, stashed there by private companies, research institutions and government agencies for security reasons. “There’s a lot or legitimate and valuable content in the deep web,” says Juliana Freire, the former leader of a University of Utah project called DeepPeep. Even so, the fact that there is vastly more information on the web that is inaccessible, compared with what is open to public view, gives one pause for thought.
On balance, the world is grateful for what the web has wrought. Despite their cavalier attitudes to privacy, websites like Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr and Foursquare have changed the way a whole generation of people communicates—creating new ways to make friends, find old acquaintances, socialise online and pursue common interests. Business sites like LinkedIn help them further their careers. YouTube and Flickr let enthusiasts share their home videos and snap shots with millions of others. Online dating sites such as Match, with its algorithms for compatibility, have fostered meaningful relationships for many a lonely heart.
From Amazon to Zappos, online retailing sites have taken the drudgery out of shopping, allowing goods to be bought with the click of a mouse at home. E-Bay lets people sell those they no longer want. Meanwhile, music-streaming sites like Spotify have opened millions of ears to melodies they might never otherwise have heard.
At a keystroke, it has become possible to find all sorts of obscure information, thanks to Google, Bing, Ask and other search engines. Wikipedia may not be the most reliable of sources, but at least it provides a quick run-down on practically anything you need to know in a hurry. Compared with printed encyclopaedias and public libraries, the web has democratised the collected wisdom of ages, and redistributed it in a way unimaginable a few decades ago. Meanwhile, people no longer have to wait for newspapers to be delivered in the morning, or for broadcasters to assemble their news shows. Web pages, tweets and blogs deliver the news as it happens.
Few would deny that such services have made the world a smarter, livelier, more interesting place. But while the news travels faster than ever courtesy of the web, so do lies, hyperbole and distortions. All those with access to the web now have a voice to air their grievances, vent their anger, parade their biases, push the boundaries of decency, spill the beans. The gatekeepers have gone.
When WikiLeaks dumps massive volumes of diplomatic correspondence stolen from government computers on its website, it is not engaging in some heroic act of free speech, nor bringing specific cases of wrongdoing to the public’s attention. In a deliberate and calculated manner, it is making the world a more dangerous place. In dealing with issues of privacy, public safety and national security, governments have every right to discuss such matters behind closed doors—indeed, we insist they do. It is dangerously naïve to argue otherwise.
Meanwhile, for every online job the web has created, several others have been lost in the bricks-and-mortar world. And unlike the latter, many of the new online jobs lie beyond a country’s shores. Likewise, for all the new freedoms and certainties the web has created, numerous old ones have disappeared. Consider copyright. Once it provided authors, artists and musicians with a living, and ensured that the fourth estate could do its job of rooting out injustice and corruption. Illegal downloading from the web, and the widespread erosion of copyright protection generally, has put paid to much of that.
You have to wonder whether something is wrong when so many people spend so much of their time these days in front of a computer screen tapping away on a keyboard, instead of going out into the real world to experience life’s actual (as opposed to virtual) adventures. Ironically, for all the labour-saving tools the web has given us, and all the personal connections it has allowed us to make, we seem to have become lonelier and more isolated than ever. That is a rather sorry state of affairs.
Wednesday, August 3, 2011
Medicines bright future
by Vivek Wadhwa • July 28, 2011
Internet and social media are capturing the public’s attention, but some of the most significant advances today are happening in medicine. Technology and medicine are converging in new ways to make possible the types of innovations that could be seen on “Star Trek.” Consider this: We spend the majority of our health-care dollars on treating chronic diseases. Technological advances will enable us to shift those investments into improving our health and preventing disease.
My colleague Daniel Kraft is a physician who chairs the medicine track and heads the FutureMed Program for Singularity University. The Silicon Valley-based university teaches business executives, technologists and government leaders about “exponential technologies.” These are inventions in fields that experience faster growth than average — such as robotics, nanotechnology and artificial intelligence. Singularity University’s founders believe that these technologies, when combined in new ways, could solve some of the world’s major problems, such as poverty, hunger, energy shortages and disease.
Here are the three major trends Kraft sees in health and medicine:
Medicine goes mobile and goes home.
Many aspects of health care and disease management will become cheaper and more effective as our mobile phones and other, similar technology platforms become smaller, Web-enabled and interconnected. In essence, these smartphones will become health platforms. They already contain a wide array of sensors, including an accelerometer that can serve as a pedometer, a camera that can photograph external ailments and transmit them for analysis, and a global positioning system (GPS) that can track our locations.
Developers are also looking beyond the smartphone when it comes to developing these new technologies.
For example, Fitbit is a clip-on, Web-integrated device that helps track how many calories you burn during the day; Zeo is a wireless headband that helps you track the quality and duration of your sleep. Other devices, such as the Basis monitor, which is still in development, can keep track of heart rates and movement. Meanwhile, an array of devices, including scales, blood pressure monitors and blood glucose monitors, are becoming Wi-Fi-enabled. These technologies, when they are connected to electronic and personal health records and to social networks, can create powerful feedback loops with friends, and provide clinicians with better information for helping their patients.
Expect to see products that keep track of your health by connecting to global health-care systems similar to the in-car assistance program OnStar. These will incorporate ubiquitous sensors embedded in toothbrushes and clothes, for example. They may even analyze our bathroom visits and food intake. They will likely use artificial-intelligence to constantly monitor our health data, predict disease and summon help in the event we fall ill.
Personalization: From genomics to proteomics
We learned how to sequence the genome a decade ago, and doing it cost billions of dollars. Companies like 23andMe are now offering partial DNA genotyping for as low as $99 (with a one-year subscription to their information service). Expect prices to continue to rapidly decline to that of a regular blood test.
This means that it is now becoming more affordable to compare one person’s DNA with another’s, learn what diseases those with similar genetics have had and discover how effective different medications or other interventions were in treating them. Imagine doing a Google search on specific genes to find others like you and learn their abilities, allergies, likes and dislikes and what diseases they are predisposed to. That future is closer than you may think.
This opens up an era of crowd-sourced, data-driven, participatory, genomics-based medicine. Today, medicines are prescribed on a “one size fits all” basis. When a particular medication causes a significant negative reaction with a small part of the population, it is prevented from being available to anyone. In the future, expect to see doctors prescribing and selecting the most patient-appropriate medicines based on a person’s DNA (the field of “pharmacogenomics”).
Regenerative medicine
Physicians have been conducting adult stem-cell therapy for more than 40 years in the field of bone-marrow transplantation, which involves transplanting stem cells that become red blood cells. Adult stem cells are now being applied in a variety of arenas, from orthopedics to cardiovascular therapy. The first trials using cells derived from embryonic stem cells were for acute spinal cord injury and started within the last year. But embryonic stem cells have raised ethical and moral controversy even though the research remains critical for future progress.
The good news is a new type of cell, induced pluripotent stem cells, which will enable the generation of personalized stem cell lines for use in diagnostics, prognosis or potentially for therapy in the same patient. IPS cells can replace embryonic stem cells for some applications and are, for example, being used to develop neurons from patients with ALS/Lou Gehrig’s disease in order to better understand the disease and develop new therapies.
Tissue engineering and 3-D printing technologies are also beginning to merge. The combination of the two technologies could lead to an era of personalized organ generation. Indeed, earlier this month, surgeons in Sweden carried out the world’s first synthetic organ transplant— a synthetic trachea/windpipe structure created and seeded with the patient’s own progenitor cells.
These developments are just the beginning. There will undoubtedly be regulatory, reimbursement and other challenges. And there will be heated debates about ethics and morals. But it won’t be long before we are using devices similar to the “Star Trek” tricorder and synthesizing our medications.
Internet and social media are capturing the public’s attention, but some of the most significant advances today are happening in medicine. Technology and medicine are converging in new ways to make possible the types of innovations that could be seen on “Star Trek.” Consider this: We spend the majority of our health-care dollars on treating chronic diseases. Technological advances will enable us to shift those investments into improving our health and preventing disease.
My colleague Daniel Kraft is a physician who chairs the medicine track and heads the FutureMed Program for Singularity University. The Silicon Valley-based university teaches business executives, technologists and government leaders about “exponential technologies.” These are inventions in fields that experience faster growth than average — such as robotics, nanotechnology and artificial intelligence. Singularity University’s founders believe that these technologies, when combined in new ways, could solve some of the world’s major problems, such as poverty, hunger, energy shortages and disease.
Here are the three major trends Kraft sees in health and medicine:
Medicine goes mobile and goes home.
Many aspects of health care and disease management will become cheaper and more effective as our mobile phones and other, similar technology platforms become smaller, Web-enabled and interconnected. In essence, these smartphones will become health platforms. They already contain a wide array of sensors, including an accelerometer that can serve as a pedometer, a camera that can photograph external ailments and transmit them for analysis, and a global positioning system (GPS) that can track our locations.
Developers are also looking beyond the smartphone when it comes to developing these new technologies.
For example, Fitbit is a clip-on, Web-integrated device that helps track how many calories you burn during the day; Zeo is a wireless headband that helps you track the quality and duration of your sleep. Other devices, such as the Basis monitor, which is still in development, can keep track of heart rates and movement. Meanwhile, an array of devices, including scales, blood pressure monitors and blood glucose monitors, are becoming Wi-Fi-enabled. These technologies, when they are connected to electronic and personal health records and to social networks, can create powerful feedback loops with friends, and provide clinicians with better information for helping their patients.
Expect to see products that keep track of your health by connecting to global health-care systems similar to the in-car assistance program OnStar. These will incorporate ubiquitous sensors embedded in toothbrushes and clothes, for example. They may even analyze our bathroom visits and food intake. They will likely use artificial-intelligence to constantly monitor our health data, predict disease and summon help in the event we fall ill.
Personalization: From genomics to proteomics
We learned how to sequence the genome a decade ago, and doing it cost billions of dollars. Companies like 23andMe are now offering partial DNA genotyping for as low as $99 (with a one-year subscription to their information service). Expect prices to continue to rapidly decline to that of a regular blood test.
This means that it is now becoming more affordable to compare one person’s DNA with another’s, learn what diseases those with similar genetics have had and discover how effective different medications or other interventions were in treating them. Imagine doing a Google search on specific genes to find others like you and learn their abilities, allergies, likes and dislikes and what diseases they are predisposed to. That future is closer than you may think.
This opens up an era of crowd-sourced, data-driven, participatory, genomics-based medicine. Today, medicines are prescribed on a “one size fits all” basis. When a particular medication causes a significant negative reaction with a small part of the population, it is prevented from being available to anyone. In the future, expect to see doctors prescribing and selecting the most patient-appropriate medicines based on a person’s DNA (the field of “pharmacogenomics”).
Regenerative medicine
Physicians have been conducting adult stem-cell therapy for more than 40 years in the field of bone-marrow transplantation, which involves transplanting stem cells that become red blood cells. Adult stem cells are now being applied in a variety of arenas, from orthopedics to cardiovascular therapy. The first trials using cells derived from embryonic stem cells were for acute spinal cord injury and started within the last year. But embryonic stem cells have raised ethical and moral controversy even though the research remains critical for future progress.
The good news is a new type of cell, induced pluripotent stem cells, which will enable the generation of personalized stem cell lines for use in diagnostics, prognosis or potentially for therapy in the same patient. IPS cells can replace embryonic stem cells for some applications and are, for example, being used to develop neurons from patients with ALS/Lou Gehrig’s disease in order to better understand the disease and develop new therapies.
Tissue engineering and 3-D printing technologies are also beginning to merge. The combination of the two technologies could lead to an era of personalized organ generation. Indeed, earlier this month, surgeons in Sweden carried out the world’s first synthetic organ transplant— a synthetic trachea/windpipe structure created and seeded with the patient’s own progenitor cells.
These developments are just the beginning. There will undoubtedly be regulatory, reimbursement and other challenges. And there will be heated debates about ethics and morals. But it won’t be long before we are using devices similar to the “Star Trek” tricorder and synthesizing our medications.
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