Innovators and entrepreneurs around the world are challenging what is possible in global health. They are looking at innovative, scalable and sustainable approaches to change local healthcare systems, especially in emerging economies. To showcase their solutions and explore how partnerships make progress possible, the MIT Sloan School of Management and King’s College London will host an inclusive all-day summit on May 22 in London. The event, “Building Sustainable Healthcare Systems through Innovation and Entrepreneurship,” will bring together entrepreneurs, academics, healthcare professionals and policymakers from around the world to discuss opportunities to strengthen healthcare ecosystems.

“We are delighted to host this event with King’s College London to find new ways to implement sustainable, effective and scalable global healthcare solutions through the lens of innovation and entrepreneurship. Through these global conversations, we seek to support and shape the conditions necessary for entrepreneurs and innovators to maximize their impact,” says MIT Sloan Associate Dean for Innovation Fiona Murray, who is co-director of the MIT Innovation Initiative and faculty director of MIT Sloan’s Legatum Center for Entrepreneurship and Development.

Georgina Campbell Flatter, research scientist and former executive director of MIT Sloan’s Legatum Center, notes: “The conversation is often around what the public sector can do, but innovators and entrepreneurs are also pushing boundaries and saving lives. There is so much we can learn from these change agents, especially those in emerging economies. Because they often benefit from the lack of legacy infrastructure and norms, we are seeing some fascinating on-the-ground solutions that are leapfrogging and changing traditional healthcare systems.”

The summit features several keynote speakers, including:

• Lord Nigel Crisp, independent crossbench member of the House of Lords and co-chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Global Health, will discuss the next global challenges in healthcare and how entrepreneurs can contribute at home and abroad.
• Javier Lozano, founder and CEO of Clínicas del Azúcar, will discuss how he built an affordable and effective healthcare delivery venture in Mexico. His patient-centric approach to diabetes care has reduced the annual cost of care by 70% and prevents more than 60% of diabetes complications.
• King’s College London Prof. Prashant Jha, head of affordable technologies, will speak about the role of innovation and partnerships in driving developing world growth and new ways to approach healthcare in emerging economies.
• King’s College London Prof. Sebastien Ourselin, head of biomedical engineering and imaging sciences, will discuss crafting a “fit for purpose” ecosystem for healthcare innovation.

Entrepreneurs will also share their startup stories at the event. Speakers include the founder of Flare, which is revolutionizing emergency healthcare access for patients in East Africa, C the Signs, a multi-platform tool for healthcare professionals to support early identification of patients at cancer risk, and MDaas Global, which aspires to build Africa’s largest network of diagnostic and primary care facilities.

In addition, panel discussions will address:

•  the role of ecosystem partnerships;
•  tools for reaching quality, sustainability and scale through entrepreneurship in low-income settings;
•  principles of behavior change;
•  using technology;
•  national frameworks for implementing health innovations and supporting entrepreneurs in emerging economies; and
• linking academic research for practice and impact.

Professor Sir Robert Lechler, provost and senior vice-president (health) at King’s College London, adds: “This is a tremendous opportunity to engage a range of distinctive voices from different professions and parts of the world, from newly-formed teams and successful CEOs, NGOs, investors, policymakers, academics and healthcare professionals. Together, we can strengthen innovation ecosystems and better equip the next frontline generation to innovate, collaborate and improve healthcare systems.”

For more information and to register, please visit here.

Hernaldo Turrillo

Hernaldo Turrillo is a writer and author specialised in innovation, AI, DLT, SMEs, trading, investing and new trends in technology and business. He has been working for ztudium group since 2017. He is the editor of openbusinesscouncil.org, tradersdna.com, hedgethink.com, and writes regularly for intelligenthq.com, socialmediacouncil.eu. Hernaldo was born in Spain and finally settled in London, United Kingdom, after a few years of personal growth. Hernaldo finished his Journalism bachelor degree in the University of Seville, Spain, and began working as reporter in the newspaper, Europa Sur, writing about Politics and Society. He also worked as community manager and marketing advisor in Los Barrios, Spain. Innovation, technology, politics and economy are his main interests, with special focus on new trends and ethical projects. He enjoys finding himself getting lost in words, explaining what he understands from the world and helping others. Besides a journalist, he is also a thinker and proactive in digital transformation strategies. Knowledge and ideas have no limits.

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Healthtech will rise to prominence in 2019 as Big Data and Artificial Intelligence (AI) become a transformational force in healthcare, says GlobalData, a data and analytics company.

The company’s latest annual outlook report, ‘The State of the Biopharmaceutical Industry – 2019’, reveals that 38% of global industry respondents believe that Big Data will have the greatest technology impact on the pharmaceutical industry in 2019.

Increasingly high volumes of data are required for all decisions and Big Data will not only alter the regulatory process as we know it, but payers will increasingly require this evidence as a pre-requisite for reimbursement. Bonnie Bain PhD, Global Head of Pharma at GlobalData

Compared with other industries, healthcare adoption of Big Data has been slow but its use will increase dramatically in 2019 across a number of core functions, namely;

• drug discovery and design
  – to determine potential drug candidates;
• clinical trials
  – for real time monitoring;
• electronic health records (EHR)
  – to depict trends and ultimately lower treatment costs and improve quality of life;
• healthcare intelligence
  – to revolutionize the tracking of patient statistics and vitals;
• hospitals and healthcare systems
  – to predict healthcare outcomes and design treatment protocols.

Not surprisingly, AI is the second biggest trend anticipated in 2019 as confirmed by 32% of survey respondents. Its use in healthcare will continue to grow rapidly, especially when considering the amount of data that can now be mined from patient records and used to design treatment plans, develop drugs or improve clinical trial outcomes.

So what do Pharma companies need to consider in order to capitalize on the potential of AI and Big Data in 2019?

According to Dr Bain, ‘‘Companies need to understand the specific benefits that technologies such as AI can offer and how it can help their organization. Investing in AI and Big Data will not provide a cure for business problems so do not believe the hype and set realistic expectations for success. There are also a lot of AI solutions on the market and not all of them are right for every business objective. Choosing the right solution for your business need is key! Also partner for success.’’

Unlike traditional drug development where M&A is common practice to acquire novel targets, this is probably not the best approach for adopting emerging technologies.

Companies should consider partnering with an established technology provider or a start-up with a proven track record to ensure successful execution. Dr Bain 

The focus on Big Data and AI is a marked shift from the past two years where Cybersecurity was a key area of interest. This was driven by several highly publicized breaches including the 2017 network cyber-attack, which led to a temporary production shutdown for pharmaceutical giant, Merck & Co and subsequent disruption of its global operations. While Cybersecurity may be a core competency now, GlobalData anticipates that AI will lead the way in 2019.

In 2018, most pharma companies were still in the early stages of implementing their AI strategy but in 2019, AI will be one of the core areas of focus and investment in the pharmaceutical industry.

Dr Bain adds, “Organizations are investing in AI not to reduce cost but rather to drive product innovation, grow revenue, gain operational efficiency and improve the customer experience. Once fully implemented, AI will enable real-time decision-making and could become a transformational force in healthcare.”

Hernaldo Turrillo

Hernaldo Turrillo is a writer and author specialised in innovation, AI, DLT, SMEs, trading, investing and new trends in technology and business. He has been working for ztudium group since 2017. He is the editor of openbusinesscouncil.org, tradersdna.com, hedgethink.com, and writes regularly for intelligenthq.com, socialmediacouncil.eu. Hernaldo was born in Spain and finally settled in London, United Kingdom, after a few years of personal growth. Hernaldo finished his Journalism bachelor degree in the University of Seville, Spain, and began working as reporter in the newspaper, Europa Sur, writing about Politics and Society. He also worked as community manager and marketing advisor in Los Barrios, Spain. Innovation, technology, politics and economy are his main interests, with special focus on new trends and ethical projects. He enjoys finding himself getting lost in words, explaining what he understands from the world and helping others. Besides a journalist, he is also a thinker and proactive in digital transformation strategies. Knowledge and ideas have no limits.

The post Healthtech: Big Data And AI To Drive Innovation, Grow Revenues And Better Efficiency In 2019 appeared first on OpenBusinessCouncil Directory.

Even though implementation of artificial intelligence (AI) in the field of dermatology is not infallible, it could result in greater diagnostic capabilities and optimized patient care outcomes, says GlobalData, a leading data and analytics company.

AI in dermatology not only has potential in alerting people when they may need to see a doctor (usually through the use of a smart device), it can also be used to create an educational resource for medical students, as well as a confidence boost to physicians making a differential diagnosis.

One notable application has been the training of a convolutional neural network (CNN) to more accurately diagnose melanoma and less often misdiagnose benign moles. This method has been shown to demonstrate greater sensitivity and specificity than 58 international dermatologists, according to the European Society for Medical Oncology (ESMO) in May 2018.

Antoine Grey, Pharma Analyst at GlobalData, comments: “A CNN is trained to compare a new image to the most visually similar images from a pre-established library of images that capture the same pathology. Through machine learning, the CNN can teach itself from what it has learned to improve performance.”

In a study published by ESMO, it was revealed that when calibrated to identify benign moles to the same extent as the 58 dermatologists, the CNN correctly identified 95% of melanomas from a sample of 100 images, whereas the dermatologists identified 86.6% of melanomas.

Another example of integrating AI in dermatology is the appearance of tele-dermatology companies such as First Derm. These companies produce applications, which help patients in deciding whether they need to see a doctor in person or not.

Grey adds: “As a result, the patient can have peace of mind and dermatologists are not inundated with unnecessary patient visits that could easily be solved by over-the-counter medication.”

However, access to medical data sets needed to train AI can be difficult to attain at the scale necessary for training due to the need for patient consent and the potential requirement of approval from relevant ethics boards.

Moreover, the clinical data sets used for training are clinical images taken with a dermascope under controlled conditions; comparison of clinical data sets to images taken with a mobile phone in poor lighting conditions may lead to misdiagnoses. Another issue for AI may be the inability to distinguish between visually similar conditions with different causes, such as rashes caused by infection compared to rashes caused by a drug reaction.

Lastly, there is the potential for racial disparity in machine learning for skin cancer screenings. This was seen in the study published by ESMO, where there were far fewer images of patients that were not Caucasian, raising concerns that the mortality rate for African Americans developing melanoma will remain higher than in Caucasians even with the advent of AI in dermatology, despite Caucasians having a much higher risk of developing melanoma.

Grey concludes: “The implementation of AI in dermatology does present several issues that need to be addressed. However, it has potential to provide significant benefit to both patients and dermatologists alike.”

Hernaldo Turrillo

Hernaldo Turrillo is a writer and author specialised in innovation, AI, DLT, SMEs, trading, investing and new trends in technology and business. He has been working for ztudium group since 2017. He is the editor of openbusinesscouncil.org, tradersdna.com, hedgethink.com, and writes regularly for intelligenthq.com, socialmediacouncil.eu. Hernaldo was born in Spain and finally settled in London, United Kingdom, after a few years of personal growth. Hernaldo finished his Journalism bachelor degree in the University of Seville, Spain, and began working as reporter in the newspaper, Europa Sur, writing about Politics and Society. He also worked as community manager and marketing advisor in Los Barrios, Spain. Innovation, technology, politics and economy are his main interests, with special focus on new trends and ethical projects. He enjoys finding himself getting lost in words, explaining what he understands from the world and helping others. Besides a journalist, he is also a thinker and proactive in digital transformation strategies. Knowledge and ideas have no limits.

The post This Is How AI In Dermatology Can Help With Diagnostic And Patient Outcomes appeared first on OpenBusinessCouncil Directory.