Sorting out AI, ML, DL, and NLP

The alphabet soup of acronyms in the world Artificial Intelligence. What are they? What do they mean? What is the difference between them? This is our ongoing reporting on AI and how it is being integrated into healthcare technology. We are seeking out the thought leaders and innovations that are moving the needle forward using artificial intelligence. Read more posts on Artificial Intelligence in Healthcare.

Follow the hashtag #AIinHealthcare.

To Read

Forbes
How Is AI Used In Healthcare – 5 Powerful Real-World Examples That Show The Latest Advances – When it comes to our health, especially in matters of life and death, the promise of artificial intelligence (AI) to improve outcomes is very intriguing. While there is still much to overcome to achieve AI-dependent health care, most notably data privacy concerns and fears of mismanaged care due to machine error and lack of human oversight, there is sufficient potential that governments, tech companies, and healthcare providers are willing to invest and test out AI-powered tools and solutions. Here are five of the AI advances in healthcare that appear to have the most potential.

Information Age
What is the potential of artificial intelligence in healthcare? – Information Age discusses how artificial intelligence is transforming the NHS, and its potential in other sectors too with Charles A. Taylor, founder and chief technology officer at HeartFlow.

Medicomp Systems
Is AI set to transform healthcare? Not according to CIOs – Is artificial intelligence (AI) the panacea to cure healthcare’s biggest challenges? Will new AI applications and advanced analytics tools provide clinicians with the point-of-care information they need to optimize patient outcomes? If you are a clinician or a healthcare CEO, you might very well believe that AI technologies are on track to transform healthcare. After all, who hasn’t read the headlines about ground-breaking solutions that are automatically analyzing volumes of clinical data and offering precise diagnoses and personalized therapies that drive more effective and efficient patient care?

 In the News

Biotricity Completes Alpha Version of Deep Data Diagnostic Solution
Biotricity Inc. (@biotricity_inc), a medical diagnostic and consumer healthcare technology company dedicated to delivering innovative, biometric remote monitoring solutions, has completed the alpha version of Bioflux 2.0’s deep data diagnostic solution in accordance with FDA arrhythmia diagnostic standards.

ITU and WHO Launch New Initiative to Leverage Power of Artificial Intelligence for Health
Two United Nations specialized agencies are joining forces to expand the use of artificial intelligence (AI) in the health sector to a global scale, and to leverage the power of AI to advance health for all worldwide. The International Telecommunication Union (ITU) (@ITU) and the World Health Organization (WHO) (@WHO) will work together through the newly established ITU Focus Group on AI for Health to develop an international “AI for health” standards framework and to identify use cases of AI in the health sector that can be scaled-up for global impact. The group is open to all interested parties. Read full press release.

Artificial Intelligence Companies Partner on a Quest to Solve Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy
Insilico Medicine (@InSilicoMeds) a leader in artificial intelligence for drug discovery, biomarker development and aging research, announced a research collaboration agreement with A2A Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (@A2APharma) A2A is a biotechnology company headquartered in NY and focused on development of novel drugs for unmet needs in oncology, drug resistant bacterial infections, and other life threatening diseases. The companies agreed to join forces to create a new company called “Consortium.AI” , which will apply the latest advances in AI to discovery of novel small molecules for the Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy (DMD) and other rare orphan diseases.

With Medical Office AI Assistant Nimblr, Patients Can Now Schedule Doctor Appointments Via Amazon Alexa Voice Commands
Nimblr (@nimblr_ai), which offers the first AI assistant for medical appointments, announced its platform integration with Amazon Alexa, enabling patients to book and reschedule appointments using voice commands, eliminating the need to pick up the phone. Other voice command platforms will follow.

Events

PATH Summit
When: September 30-October 2, 2018
Where: Omni Shoreham in Washington, DC
Networking Event for Automation and Artificial Intelligence in Healthcare – Learn More.

AI Solve: Healthcare – Webcast Replay
Recorded March 21, 2018 at UCSF in SanFrancisco
View the recording

AI is already beginning to shape the healthcare industry, Intel brought together some of the leading minds in the space. At the event called Intel SOLVE: Healthcare, in San Francisco, Intel brought together researchers from Harvard, Princeton, Stanford, GE Healthcare, Optum, Mayo Clinic, The MIT/Harvard Broad Institute and more to talk about the work they are doing with AI.

To Follow
The Basics and Resources

From the leading text book around the world, Artificial Intelligence: A Modern Approach.

Artificial Intelligence is composed of six different disciplines:

  1. Natural Language Processing to enable it to communicate successfully in English
  2. Knowledge Representation to store what it knows or hears
  3. Automated Reasoning to use the stored information to answer questions and to draw new conclusions
  4. Machine Learning to adapt to new circumstances and to detect and extrapolate patterns
  5. Computer Vision to perceive objects
  6. Robotics to manipulate objects and move about

To build a generally intelligent agent, you need machine learning in addition to the other aspects mentioned above.

Machine Learning is roughly the science of prediction. Given certain knowns (features), you wish to predict some unknowns (targets). The unknown could be structured (e.g. numeric) or unstructured (e.g. a string response).

Deep Learning is a sub field of machine learning where concepts are learned hierarchically. The simplest concepts emerge first, followed by more complicated concepts that build on the simpler ones. Usually, this leads to a simple layered hierarchy of concepts.

Optum Resource Library

Natural Language Processing: AI with an ROI
Health care providers need to see a return on any analytic investment they make. Natural language processing (NLP) is one way AI can help providers convert the potential within their health data into quality improvement and cost savings. Natural language processing is an AI technology that actually makes sense for health care.