These Algorithms Could Bring an End To the World's Deadliest Killer (nytimes.com) 21
In some of the most remote and impoverished corners of the world, where respiratory illnesses abound and trained medical professionals fear to tread, diagnosis is increasingly powered by artificial intelligence and the internet. From a report: In less than a minute, a new app on a phone or a computer can scan an X-ray for signs of tuberculosis, Covid-19 and 27 other conditions. TB, the most deadly infectious disease in the world, claimed nearly 1.4 million lives last year. The app, called qXR, is one of many A.I.-based tools that have emerged over the past few years for screening and diagnosing TB. The tools offer hope of flagging the disease early and cutting the cost of unnecessary lab tests. Used at large scale, they may also spot emerging clusters of disease.
"Among all of the applications of A.I., I think digitally interpreting an image using an algorithm instead of a human radiologist is probably furthest along," said Madhukar Pai, the director of the McGill International TB Center in Montreal. Artificial intelligence cannot replace clinicians, Dr. Pai and other experts cautioned. But the combination of A.I. and clinical expertise is proving to be powerful. "The machine plus clinician is better than the clinician, and it's also better than machine alone," said Dr. Eric Topol, the director of the Scripps Research Translational Institute in San Diego and the author of a book on the use of A.I. in medicine. In India, where roughly one-quarter of the world's TB cases occur, an app that can flag the disease in remote locations is urgently needed.
"Among all of the applications of A.I., I think digitally interpreting an image using an algorithm instead of a human radiologist is probably furthest along," said Madhukar Pai, the director of the McGill International TB Center in Montreal. Artificial intelligence cannot replace clinicians, Dr. Pai and other experts cautioned. But the combination of A.I. and clinical expertise is proving to be powerful. "The machine plus clinician is better than the clinician, and it's also better than machine alone," said Dr. Eric Topol, the director of the Scripps Research Translational Institute in San Diego and the author of a book on the use of A.I. in medicine. In India, where roughly one-quarter of the world's TB cases occur, an app that can flag the disease in remote locations is urgently needed.
Images (Score:3)
Going to get rid of.... (Score:3)
Re: (Score:3)
Religions.
Re:Going to get rid of.... (Score:4)
Re: (Score:2)
Well, I think that I probably have a much better chance of getting a useful response from an AI than I've ever seen from any deity at least.
That's not all (Score:5, Informative)
Spectrum, the newsletter of the IEEE, has had a lot of news the last few years on this type of development for a variety of diseases. I was gong to post some examples, but Google came back with so many that I'm just going to add the search phrase:
cell phone medical diagnostics site:spectrum.ieee.org
People are working on cellphone/AI based systems to detect not only TB but MRSA infections, blood analyzers, allergen tests, diabetic vision loss, HIV, COVID19, and many, many more. It's an exciting field of research.
TB, the most deadly (Score:3)
Eh? Other than all of the rest of the top ten most deadly diseases you mean.
https://www.who.int/news-room/... [who.int]
To much misinformation going around these days, is anyone not sick of it?
Re:TB, the most deadly (Score:4, Informative)
This is a list of causes of deaths, not diseases. Or do you seriously think that a road accident is a disease? Tuberculosis kills more people than any other infectious disease and it is notoriously difficult to cure because it takes at least 6 months of a difficult antibiotica regimen and in developed countries the kinds of people that do have tuberculosis are only seldom treated for it and often break the treatment.
Re: (Score:2)
Sure, but that's not what the headline and summary say.
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Might get us too (Score:2)
Wow (Score:1)
Wow, gee whiz and willikers, Batman!
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In this century. Tuburculosis was a major killer at the turn of the 20th century, and during outbreaks masks were common and outdoor activities were sometimes limited for entire neighborhoods. (They couldn't actually lock down because very few people had refrigerators, potable water to the home, or central heating.) People were forcibly quarantined **FOR LIFE** if it didn't respond to treatment, many of our older "wilderness resorts" started out as TB colonies. This was the time period when spittoons we
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deadly infectious disease (Score:2)
"TB, the most deadly infectious disease in the world, claimed nearly 1.4 million lives last year."
BTW, Corona killed 1,398,243 people this year and it ain't finished yet.
TB or not TB (Score:2)
Consumption be done about it? Of cough, of cough. It's not the cough that carries you off. It's the coffin they carry you off in.
Lock em down! (Score:2)
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TB, the most deadly infectious disease in the world, claimed nearly 1.4 million lives last year
Should lock everyone inside their homes, slip food & water through the door. See how silly this
sounds? But, we are allowing governments to control us.
Most TB nowadays is in developing countries, safely out of sight and out of mind from the developed world. If it was overwhelming medical systems here in the West then that would not sound silly at all.