The Technological Evolution and Acceleration of Personalized Medicine
Modern technology is thrusting the world into a new age of innovation and efficiency. Due to factors such as exponential growth in the tech industry, increased accessibility to cloud storage and computing, and the race to lead advancements in artificial intelligence, disruption is touching everything from retail to gaming. However, while the application of innovative technologies moves more quickly in some industries than in others, we’re now at a tipping point where these advancements are poised to revolutionize slower-to-adapt, high-impact industries, such as healthcare. Access to these advanced technologies is driving rapid expansion in personalized medicine, and may soon change the game for the development of treatment methods, risk assessment and disease control.
What is Personalized Medicine?
Personalized medicine, which is the tailoring of medical treatment to individual patient characteristics, has been gaining traction in recent years, and has the potential to change the manner in which healthcare professionals identify and manage medical issues. Because each person has a unique version of the human genome, an individual’s health stems in part from genetic variations and mutations. Techniques such as genome sequencing can reveal predispositions to diseases and consequently direct the physician’s efforts to mitigating anticipated health risks. Personalized medicine is already impacting clinical research and patient treatment (check out what our users at Xstrahl are working on), and is poised to gain even more traction alongside ongoing technological improvements.
The Role of Mobile Connectivity, Cloud Storage and Computing
One of the most significant phenomena of our current digital landscape is the scale of data storage and sharing. Mobile connectivity and increased accessibility to cloud storage allows for massive amounts of information to be maintained, and shared, with ease. Many of us walk around with a smartphone in our pocket that easily outperforms the supercomputers that put Neil Armstrong on the moon. The powerful interconnectivity provided by our current mobile network allows us to access information from anywhere, whether for work or play.
Similarly, thanks to the massive infrastructure created by the likes of Google, Amazon and Microsoft, companies can access computing power without spending large sums of money on in-house data-storage devices and computers. Instead, companies can rely on cloud-based service and pay only for what they use. And, while cloud access is already more affordable than in-house solutions, many cloud-compute cost trends indicate that costs are declining further, creating even more opportunity for cross-industry advancements.
As if data sharing wasn’t fast and easy enough already, its evolution shows no sign of slowing. In fact, recent findings indicate that the global average internet speed rose by 23 percent from May, 2017 to May, 2018. Likewise, Elon Musk’s venture to create a low-cost, satellite-based global broadband network may soon make worldwide internet access a reality. Fast, easy and affordable access to data and computing is a major contributor to the acceleration of personalized healthcare by enabling an analytical curation of information that would otherwise be difficult and time-consuming to collect.
The AI Arms Race
Another factor driving the acceleration of personalized medicine is the advanced ability to analyze and interpret the massive amounts of data that can now be shared. Artificial intelligence is paving the way for next-level research and predictive analytics across many fields, especially healthcare. Because of the speed and accuracy with which AI can comb through and cross-reference raw data, the potential learnings around a patient’s health are widely broadened. With access to numerous datasets relating to DNA, blood work, x-rays, and more, machine learning can discover signatures of disease, identify promising plans for treatment and even generate new drugs, all more than one hundred times cheaper, faster, and more accurate than existing research methods.
Luckily for healthcare professionals and patients everywhere, the race to harness the power of AI is well underway around the globe, and real-world applications are becoming more and more common as the battle to lead the world in AI advancements ensues. Last year, China’s government released a plan to lead the world in Artificial Intelligence by 2030. They seem to be making good on their promise considering China accounted for 48 percent of the world’s AI startup funding in 2017, whereas the US accounted for only 38 percent. Likewise, China is projected to generate $7 trillion in GDP related to AI deployment by 2030, whereas North America is predicted to only capture $3.7 trillion in AI-related gains.
Regardless of who “wins” the race, AI advancements spell global success for the future of personalized medicine, and many investors and analysts are jumping on board, projecting significant growth for AI technologies in healthcare. For example, research suggests that AI will transform diagnostic imaging by increasing productivity and accuracy, and enabling automated treatment planning. Because of this, hospitals are projected to spend close to $2 billion a year on artificial intelligence for medical imaging by 2023.
Future State
There are numerous factors contributing to the imminent growth and future success of personalized medicine. From data accessibility to cloud computing and machine learning, each element plays an important role in improving functionality and precision in the healthcare sector. The rising need for effectively storing and interpreting big data will propel this growth, and medical advancements will become less dependent on human intervention as processes are refined. Ultimately, the strategic combination of information technology, artificial intelligence, sequencing technologies and interconnectivity will create a system of predictive, preventive, personalized and participatory healthcare treatment.
Some of the questions I’m thinking about are:
What could a 10x improvement to our existing computation power and connectivity speed enable for scientific discovery? How should we augment our existing medical devices?
What could wireless global internet enable for rural health? How will telemedicine shape the future of healthcare, administration and capital equipment?
What will happen when billions of new medical records are digitized and organized around the world? What could AI researchers do with this data?
If your wheels are turning and you’d like to share your perspective, let’s get in touch.
