Article • IT
What data hackers get from hospital
When hospitals are hacked, the public hears about the number of victims – but not what information the cybercriminals stole.
Big data
Article • From generic to personalised, from empirical to evidence-based medicine
Hopes for hybrid imaging lie in AI
During a European Society of Hybrid, Molecular and Translational Imaging (ESHI) session at ECR 2019, three speakers discussed the role of artificial intelligence (AI) in hybrid imaging. While AI and machine learning is supporting clinicians using hybrid techniques such as PET/CT, MR/PET, or ultrasound and CT, challenges remain in ‘training the machines’ to add value to radiologists’ and…
Video • Digital twin
Collaboration of the future: and AI makes three
In view of the advent of personalised medicine and holistic therapy many experts predict the end of healthcare as we know it. However, in many places it is ‘healthcare business as usual’. In our interview, Dr Christoph Zindel, President Diagnostic Imaging at Siemens Healthineers, explains where he sees radiology bridging the gap between symptom-centred treatment today and the systemic…
Article • A look into the crystal ball
Experts debate predictive potential of AI
‘Hello, John? You are about to suffer a heart attack – please come to the hospital immediately!’ Will we, one day, be collected by emergency doctors even before we’re ill? If it was up to some AI experts at Medica, this could be the case – soon. Some obstacles must yet be overcome to achieve perfect AI predictions. Yet, during Medica, some IT experts ventured to gaze into a crystal ball.
News • Health Innovation Night
Digitization: New therapy approaches for the patient 'hospital'
Digitalization offers great potential for hospitals: diseases can be detected earlier, internal processes more efficiently organized, health expenditure reduced and patients better cared for. Artificial intelligence, robotics, sensor technology, big data, additive manufacturing or augmented reality - the technologies for this have long been available.
News • Xpomet preview
A passion for value-based innovations in medicine
International leaders in medicine aim at analyzing, evaluating, and incorporating the major developments in the field into the ecosystem of Xpomet Medicinale. These leaders forming the Medical Board met on 20 March to discuss the trending topics and how to approach them regarding the structure and goals of the Festival. Christian Dierks, owner of the innovation consultancy for healthcare and life…
Article • Distributed learning
Radiomics on tap in 5-10 years
Keeping data within the hospital by sending the learning modules to each hospital database might prove a game-changer in radiomics, a leading Dutch researcher will show at ECR 2019. Radiomics, a field that aims to extract large amounts of quantitative features from medical images using data-characterisation algorithms, is a major advance for healthcare, according to Philippe Lambin, a radiation…
Article • Breast and skeletal health
AI is proving pivotal in women’s health solutions
Pete Valenti, Hologic’s division president of breast and skeletal health solutions, talks about how AI is driving innovation in breast health technology. Underpinning that evolution more recently has been the acquisition of two organisations – digital specimen radiography specialists Faxitron Bioptics and BioZorb marker manufacturer Focal Therapeutics.
Article • Neuro-research
Brain-computer interfaces: Getting a Grasp on how we think
A world where machines can be controlled by thought alone – such is the promise of so-called brain-computer interfaces (BCI). BCIs are both hardware and software communication systems that read brain and nerve signals, convert those into electrical signals and translate human thoughts into machine commands. Developers of BCIs rely on artificial intelligence, neural network models and big data…
Article • Future of radiology
'Radiologists who do not use AI will be replaced by those who do'
Recent developments in artificial intelligence (AI) created a veritable hype. However, that initial awe was increasingly mixed with apprehension about the potential effects of AI on healthcare. In radiology, bleak dystopias are conjured up with AI replacing the human radiologist. A scenario that Dr Felix Nensa considers premature, to say the least.
News • Debilitating disease
Discovery of a new anti-epileptic drug target
An international collaboration between Imperial College London, Singapore's Duke-NUS Medical School and Belgium-based pharmaceutical company UCB led to the discovery of a new anti-epileptic drug target and a whole new approach that promises to speed up the discovery of future drugs to treat debilitating diseases, such as epilepsy.
Article • Risk assessment
Predictive potential of Big Data in the lab
Big Data can be a critical tool in helping clinicians develop advanced patient health risk assessment and stratification models as well as leading to a new level of patient empowerment. Professor Josep Roca outlined the benefits of Big Data in a laboratory context during the European Federation of Clinical Chemistry and Laboratory Medicine (EFLM) Strategic Conference held in Mannheim, Germany,…
Article • The EFLM Strategic Conference
Placing the medical lab in a future landscape
The need to ensure that laboratory medicine can meet the future challenges of a rapidly changing healthcare environment sits at the core of an innovative strategic conference for this sector. The agenda of the European Federation of Clinical Chemistry and Laboratory Medicine (EFLM) Strategic Conference in Mannheim (18-19 June) highlighted the challenges, and also outlined areas of discussion to…
Article • Transformation
The USA’s digital healthcare revolution
The digital revolution in healthcare in the United States is marching steadily forward, spurred by federal government regulations and financial incentives, by technological innovations, and by the necessities of increasing healthcare treatment efficiency, of lowering its cost and economic impact, and of elevating communications among providers, patients and payers to the norms of the 21st…
Article • Assisting algorithms
Big data advances rare disease diagnosis and cancer therapy
Two major projects feeding on big data and based in Spain have recently come under the spotlight: Mendelian, a tool to expedite rare diseases diagnosis, and Harmony, an EU platform that aims to improve targeted therapy in haematological cancer. Rare diseases affect as many as 6% of the Spanish population. Although this percentage is high, these conditions are individually rare, which complicates…
Article • Precision medicine
Promising radiomics for breast MRI
‘Breast cancer rates are continuously increasing, and we don’t yet have a means of prevention,’ said Dr Clemens Kaiser, from the Medical Faculty Mannheim, at Heidelberg University, who believes the only way to save more patients from death, after providing the best possible diagnostics procedures, is via precision medicine: the right treatment at the earliest possible time. The radiologist…
Sponsored • Machine Learning
Finding the right algorithms to tackle big data
Tracy Accardi, Hologic’s Vice President (Global R&D), spoke of the importance of innovation, tomosynthesis, artificial intelligence/deep learning and open dialogue with the radiology community. Hologic addresses a broad spectrum of gynaecological, perinatal, aesthetic, skeletal and breast women’s health issues. To enhance this approach, Accardi, explained the importance of working closely…
Article • Value based lab medicine
Meeting the challenge of modern laboratory demands
Faced with the constant challenge of increasing demand and a backdrop of falling reimbursement, Mayo Clinic in the United States has adopted an innovative and proactive approach to managing its laboratory services. That has seen the US-based medical giant embrace a variety of tools and reference materials to aid clinician decision making, improve care and lower costs. Dr Curt Hanson, Chief…
Article • Big data in the lab
The benefits of tackling acute kidney injury at the earliest opportunity
Steps taken by a New York health system to identify and tackle acute kidney injury (AKI) at an early stage are having a significant impact on improving intervention and patient outcomes. Key to the turnaround has lay in pathologists accessing big data from the laboratory, and working more closely with administrative personnel to identify early AKI and then responding to it more quickly. Speaking…
News • Memory-Driven Computing
Time lapse for dementia research
The German Center for Neurodegenerative Diseases (DZNE) is just starting the operation of a new high-performance computer in Bonn. It should significantly accelerate the evaluation of biomedical data and thus lead to faster progress in dementia research. For this the computer uses the principles of the novel computer architecture "Memory-Driven Computing". Time is running out: Dementias…
Article • Compelling cohorts
Population imaging: Big Data will boost disease prediction
Population imaging is key to determining disease prediction and risk prevention, and Big Data will be key to extracting information and drawing analysis from imaging results, experts highlighted during the annual meeting of the European Society of Magnetic Resonance in Medicine and Biology (ESMRMB) held in Barcelona in October. Interest in cohort studies has been increasing over the years and…
Article • The InnerEye Project
AI drives analysis of medical images
Some time in the distant future artificial intelligence (AI) systems may displace radiologists and many other medical specialists. However, in a far more realistic future AI tools will assist radiologists by performing very complex functions with medical imaging data that are impossible or unfeasible today, according to a presentation at the RSNA/AAPM Symposium during the Radiological Society of…
News • Platform demonstrations
AEGLE webinars take a look at Big Data analytics in Healthcare
In February 20th and 22nd and March 15th 2018 AEGLE is launching a series of webinars with the objective of demonstrating how the final prototype of the AEGLE platform supports the use of big data analytics in healthcare. The tools and analytics that the AEGLE Platform supports can be used for both (clinical) research and clinical practice. The four demos that will take place online through a…
News • Speech analysis
Psychotic or not? Software can tell by listening to your voice
Computer-based analyses of speech transcripts obtained from interviews with at-risk youths were able to predict which youths would later develop psychosis within two years, with an accuracy of up to 83 percent. In two independent cohorts of young people at risk for psychosis, a disturbance in the flow of meaning when speaking, otherwise known as being tangential or going off track, predicted who…
News • Consumer Electronic Show
Blockchain, Blue Button and interoperability among hot topics at CES 2018
The tech world descended upon Las Vegas this week for the annual Consumer Electronics Show, and plenty of health IT’s biggest players were in attendance. While much of the discussion was on consumer-friendly health tools and novel digital interventions, there were still a handful of products and discussions between executives and entrepreneurs focused on healthcare’s largest roadblocks —…