Could AI be the game-changer for maternal health?🤰🏻

Hey there!

Welcome to this week's edition of Supermedic where AI is making a difference in healthcare. It bridges the gap, empowers doctors, restores lost voices, and explores new dimensions.

Stay informed, stay ahead. Enjoy the read!

TODAY’S MENU

• Apple Vision Pro Unlocks New Opportunities for Healthcare 😎

• Melinda Gates Says AI in Pregnancy could Save Women's Lives🤰

• Muscle-Reading Throat Patch Offers Hope for Regaining Speech 🗣

• Microsoft Forms Health AI Governance Network 🌍

• Salesforce Unveils AI Tools to Tackle Doctor Burnout ☁️

Read time: under 7 minutes

FUTURE IS NOW

Apple Vision Pro Unlocks New Opportunities for Healthcare

Launched earlier this year, Apple Vision Pro is a revolutionary new mixed reality headset that combines VR and AR in a way that seamlessly blends digital content with the physical world.

On their blog, Apple showcases how their new device unlocks exciting possibilities for developers to create innovative healthcare apps that enhance patient care, training, collaboration, and overall well-being.

How Apple Vision Pro can elevate Healthcare?

• Improved Patient Outcomes: Stryker, known for their robotic surgery arms, launched myMako, an app that help surgeons to plan surgeries with better visualization, potentially leading to less pain and faster recovery for patients.

• Enhanced Training: Boston Children's Hospital's CyranoHealth utilizes immersive simulations for healthcare workers, improving training and reducing anxiety.

• Revolutionized Collaboration: Siemens Healthineers' Cinematic Reality allows doctors and patients to interact with 3D medical scans within their real environment.

• Mental Health Support: Cedars-Sinai's Xaia app utilizes a digital avatar to provide AI-powered therapy in immersive, customizable environments.

WOMEN HEALTH

Melinda Gates says AI in Pregnancy Could Help Save Women's Lives

Each day, nearly 800 women around the world die from preventable causes related to pregnancy and childbirth.

In an interview given by ABC News, Melinda Gates highlights how AI-powered ultrasound technology is a "game-changer” and how it could help save the lives of women and newborns.

How it is a game-changer?

Melinda Gates Foundation teamed up with Philips to provide ultrasound portable devices in rural and low-income area that lack access to routine prenatal care.
Operated by nurses and midwives, these devices connect to smartphone/tablets and offer instant fetal diagnosis, potentially leading to early intervention and improved maternal and infant health outcomes.

What are the main benefits?

Early Detection and Intervention: By enabling early detection of potential complications, these tools can facilitate timely interventions, significantly improving maternal and fetal health outcomes.

Empowerment Through Technology: Providing community health workers and healthcare professionals with AI-assisted tools empowers them to deliver better care, enhancing the overall quality of healthcare services.

Education and Awareness: The deployment of these technologies also plays a crucial role in educating women about their health and the health of their unborn children, fostering a deeper understanding and awareness of prenatal care.

This approach by Melinda Gates and the Gates Foundation highlights a transformative step towards leveraging technology to bridge healthcare gaps and save lives in underserved regions around the world.

WEARABLE

Muscle-Reading Throat Patch Offers Hope for Regaining Speech

Researchers from the University of California unveil a revolutionary patch that allows people with voice disorders to "speak" again by reading throat muscle movements.

How it works?

The patch is a small, stretchy device that harnesses muscle movements for power. It's attached to the skin where it can detect the movements of the larynx muscles. These movements are then converted into electrical signals, which a machine learning algorithm interprets as speech. The processed speech is ultimately played through a speaker, although the current prototype is limited to certain pre-recorded phrases.

Design and Testing: The waterproof patch is lightweight, about the size of a large coin, and weighs only seven grams, with a texture similar to a rubber glove. To evaluate its efficacy, eight volunteers were asked to speak and whisper sentences under various conditions (standing, walking, running). The device demonstrated around 95% accuracy in predicting the spoken sentences.

Advantages: One of the significant advantages of this patch is its ability to function without detecting vocal cord vibrations. This feature makes it a potentially vital tool for people with damaged vocal cords. Compared to existing treatments for voice disorders, which can be inconvenient or invasive, this patch offers a more comfortable and practical solution.

Challenges and Future Directions:

The current limitation is that the device can only play pre-recorded sentences, which restricts its applicability. However, the researchers are optimistic that advancements in algorithms will allow for real-time translation of muscle movements into speech without pre-recording voice signals. Despite these promising results, the patch is still in the prototype stage and may be years away from being available to patients.

ETHIC

Microsoft and Healthcare Leaders Launch TRAIN to Ensure Trustworthy AI in Medicine

A new initiative called the Trustworthy and Responsible AI Network (TRAIN) has emerged from a collaboration between healthcare leaders and Microsoft. TRAIN aims to ensure AI integration in healthcare is ethical, safe, and reliable.

Why is TRAIN Important?

While AI holds immense potential to transform healthcare through improved diagnosis, personalized treatment, and better decision-making for doctors, ethical concerns around data privacy, bias, and human oversight require careful consideration.

What will TRAIN Do?

• Share best practices: TRAIN will facilitate the exchange of best practices for AI safety, reliability, monitoring, and responsible management.

• Register AI tools: A secure online portal will be established to register AI tools used in clinical care.

• Measure AI Outcomes: TRAIN will provide tools to measure the effectiveness and value of AI in healthcare, while identifying potential bias issues.

• Develop a National AI Registry: TRAIN will play a key role in creating a national registry to track real-world outcomes of AI algorithms, including efficacy, safety, and optimization.

BUSINESS

Salesforce Unveils AI Tools to Tackle Doctor Burnout

Salesforce, the #1 leader on CRM, just announced a new set of AI-powered solutions aimed at reducing administrative burdens. These tools address a major pain point for physicians, who often spend a significant amount of time on tasks like scheduling appointments, summarizing patient data, and sending referrals. This heavy administrative workload is a leading contributor to doctor burnout, impacting both physician well-being and patient care.

The 1st solution, Einstein Copilot: Health Actions, utilizes conversational AI. Healthcare workers can use natural language to perform tasks like scheduling appointments, summarizing patient information, and sending referrals. This streamlines the process and frees up valuable time for doctors to focus on what matters most: patient care. (Available by the end of 2024)

The 2nd solution, Assessment Generation, tackles another administrative hurdle: digitizing health assessments. This tool removes the need for manual coding and typing of surveys and other assessments, further reducing the administrative burden on healthcare professionals. (Available Summer 2024)

Both solutions leverage Salesforce's Einstein 1 Platform, which helps healthcare organizations unify medical data from various sources like electronic health records and insurance claims systems. This unified data platform allows for easier access and analysis of patient information, potentially leading to improved care and outcomes.

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