Amazon Starts Selling Software To Mine Patient Health Records (wsj.com) 84
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Wall Street Journal: Amazon is starting to sell software to mine patient medical records (Warning: source paywalled; alternative source) for information that doctors and hospitals could use to improve treatment and cut costs, the latest move by a big technology company into the health care industry. The software can read digitized patient records and other clinical notes, analyze them and pluck out key data points, Amazon says. The company is expected to announce the launch Tuesday. Amazon Web Services, the company's cloud-computing division, has been selling such text-analysis software to companies outside medicine for use in areas such as travel booking, customer support and supply-chain management. The technology's health-care application is the newest effort by Amazon to tap into the lucrative market.
Amazon officials say the company's software developers trained the system using a process known as deep learning to recognize all the ways a doctor might record notes. "We're able to completely, automatically look inside medical language and identify patient details," including diagnoses, treatments, dosage and strengths, "with incredibly high accuracy," said Matt Wood, general manager of artificial intelligence at Amazon Web Services. During testing, the software performed on par or better than other published efforts, and can extract data on patients' diseases, prescriptions, lab orders and procedures, said Taha Kass-Hout, a senior leader with Amazon's health-care and artificial intelligence efforts. The project is called Amazon Comprehend Medical, which "allows developers to process unstructured medical text and identify information such as patient diagnosis, treatments, dosages, symptoms and signs, and more," according to a blog post. Dr. Kass-Hout says Amazon Web Services won't see the data processed by its algorithms, "which will be encrypted and unlocked by customers who have the key," reports WSJ.
Amazon officials say the company's software developers trained the system using a process known as deep learning to recognize all the ways a doctor might record notes. "We're able to completely, automatically look inside medical language and identify patient details," including diagnoses, treatments, dosage and strengths, "with incredibly high accuracy," said Matt Wood, general manager of artificial intelligence at Amazon Web Services. During testing, the software performed on par or better than other published efforts, and can extract data on patients' diseases, prescriptions, lab orders and procedures, said Taha Kass-Hout, a senior leader with Amazon's health-care and artificial intelligence efforts. The project is called Amazon Comprehend Medical, which "allows developers to process unstructured medical text and identify information such as patient diagnosis, treatments, dosages, symptoms and signs, and more," according to a blog post. Dr. Kass-Hout says Amazon Web Services won't see the data processed by its algorithms, "which will be encrypted and unlocked by customers who have the key," reports WSJ.
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Alas for you it'll only tell you of the idiots who tell their doctor that they "drink, smoke, do drugs, and have the diabetis brought on from eating all that junk food"
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Boomers are idiots who don't know and thus don't care how idiotic they've become. The sooner their short sighted idiocy can be rendered incapable of influencing governmental regulatory policy regarding the safety and welfare of the country they are destroying, the better.
This is true in many different areas, and I speak as a Boomer.
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Boomers are idiots who don't know and thus don't care how idiotic they've become. The sooner their short sighted idiocy can be rendered incapable of influencing governmental regulatory policy regarding the safety and welfare of the country they are destroying, the better.
This is true in many different areas, and I speak as a Boomer.
I can speak as a late boomer.
Good luck millennials and others - your time in the seat of blame will arrive sooner than you think. And don't think it won't happen.
It's pretty interesting stuff. I've worked hard my whole life, saved a lot of money, invested wisely, and don't owe anyone a penny. Yet I am the problem.
But here's the real fun part - there were boomers in my day who other than separated by time sounded just like the laments of millennials now - the only difference was that we were worried a
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As 60 yr old, I'm pretty much 100% in agreement with your post. The one thing I think our generation was truly guilty of was creating a generation of kids who got participation awards instead of teaching them to compete. We now have "helicopter parents" who can't let their kids be kids and learn to take care of themselves.
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As 60 yr old, I'm pretty much 100% in agreement with your post. The one thing I think our generation was truly guilty of was creating a generation of kids who got participation awards instead of teaching them to compete. We now have "helicopter parents" who can't let their kids be kids and learn to take care of themselves.
Well stated. We underwent a social experiment, with children that we tried to protect form any and all adversity.
As it turns out - that doesn't work. We created the snowflakes. Adults in body only. I watched a couple Youtube videos, where young ladies punched men. Then the men punched back. The shock on these women's faces was amazing - they were surprised that getting punched in the face hurts. Men are not exempt from not being able to handle adversity.
This is not advocating punching people, I was rai
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While we're at it let's exclude all the people who get skin cancer because they worked outside and never used sunblock. Let's exclude all the women with breast cancer who didn't get regular mammographies. Let's exclude all the birth defects that weren't aborted in early pregnancy, let's exclude all the people involved in motor vehicle accidents because they are all preventable, let's exclude all workplace injuries for not following correct safety procedures, let's exclude...
I mean, why stop just at your l
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FWIW, back when I was a kid (60s/70s) we used to actually put on baby oil to try and brown up better. I don't think I ever heard about skin cancer until the 80s.
Re: oh good (Score:2, Funny)
what about hippa and other laws? must they give ke (Score:3)
what about hippa and other laws? must they give the key to the patient?
also will Amazon make it so that the patient can key with out needing to buy the software as under the law providers cannot charge a fee for searching for or retrieving your information,
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Until "unscannable" becomes a problem and then everyone will be in for some retrieving.
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The Left lol? You just got your ASS kicked by facts, no wonder you're so angry. Just imagine it's Putin and take the load like Trump would. That's a good know-nothing Fox News bitch, just take it. You like being fucked with the facts.
Take it bitch. Take that pillowcase off your head and suck this cockkk
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Here's another fact. Canada and Europe are second choices for migrants. They only go there if they can't make it to the US.
Other way around mate.
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I think you mis-spelled "Right". You know, the people who listen to Goebbels / Hannity rant on Faux News.
As long as ... (Score:2)
Wait, WHAT!? (Score:2)
They made software that can accurately READ A DOCTOR'S HANDWRITING!?
This is AMAZING news! Everyone else in the medical industry labors trying to decipher the arcane hieroglyphics of their scripts! This will revolutionize the industry!!
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They made software that can accurately READ A DOCTOR'S HANDWRITING!?
A robot pharmacist? Wow!
I would like use it to scan the records and to sue (Score:1)
“Customers who have the key” (Score:2)
That’s an oddly vague qualifier. Are insurance companies also “customers who have the key”? What about credit agencies or banks? What about advertisers?
If my doctor is the only one who’d have access, I’d expect a much clearer statement of that fact. I’m guessing there’s a reason they were so vague.
Advertising (Score:2)
Is this already being used for advertising purposes? I had a potentially serious health issue last month, and received my very first snail mail advertisement for "cremation services" 30 days later. I'm feeling like the modern tech economy has become a committee of vultures circling over all of our heads.
Happily for most people (Score:2)
This sort of thing is illegal in, developed, civilised countries. The USA considers the purpose of Hospitals, doctors etc to be different from the rest of us. We think that they are to do with health, sickness, prevention etc. As yours are run by people whose prime function is providing shareholders with dividends, human welfare related uses are often far less important.
Google tried some of its stuff here but that has come to an (apparent) end.
Naive or lying? (Score:2)
for information that doctors and hospitals could use to improve treatment and cut costs, the latest move by a big technology company into the health care industry. The software can read digitized patient records and other clinical notes, analyze them and pluck out key data points, Amazon says.
If they think that cutting costs and improving treatment will be the primary use of these tools they are either incredibly naive or lying. This sort of data mining might get used for some research but it will mostly be used to make someone a pile of money at our expense.
"We're able to completely, automatically look inside medical language and identify patient details," including diagnoses, treatments, dosage and strengths, "with incredibly high accuracy,"
Yeah, no way that could possibly be abused...
Insurance companies? (Score:2)
Yeah sure it works (Score:2)
Ah yes, another tech company that thinks it can do miracles in healthcare. Tons of companies have been trying to do natural language processing of medical notes, they all pretty much fail for one reason or another. The only time it works is for VERY specific scenarios where the question is extremely narrow and they spend a huge amount of time training the system for that question.
Good! (Score:2)
On a personal level, I'm a fierce privacy advocate.
Professionally, I work in healthcare data/analysis and I can tell you this is very exciting. We have tons of unstructured/freetext data floating around that nobody uses because it's too hard. We rely on structured data points (date, scores, measurements) which tell only a part of the story. So now finally we have a really well researched and put together service, where we can call the Comprehend API to run it across our data and give us all kinds of new in