Health Archives - Omics Help Desk

7Jan '20

Democratic Presidential Candidate Andrew Yang foresees a future where artificial intelligence (AI) and the automation of jobs will lead to the disintegration of our society with human workers being replaced by machines, which is one of his main campaign messages.

As stated in a November 2019 article by Martin Ford in The Hill: “AI and automation will disrupt our world — but only Andrew Yang is warning about it”. The article also includes these statistics:

A recent report from the consulting firm Deloitte found that, among more than a thousand surveyed American executives, 63 percent agreed with the statement that “to cut costs, my company wants to automate as many jobs as possible using AI,” and 36 percent already believe that job losses from AI-enabled automation should be viewed as an ethical issue.

The statements are usually attributed to manufacturing jobs and low-paid jobs, definitely not highly educated professionals, like lawyers, doctors, or scientists. Yet lawyers and doctors will also see a decline in demand when AI takes over decision making in their fields. But for those decisions to be made, the machines will have to learn correctly. So, what kind of humans will still be needed to perform any work that machines cannot do?

Apart form certain service industry jobs where humans prefer human touch or human communication such as nurses, masseuses, waiters, the only other jobs that will not only be available but highly requested besides computer and robot programmers, are data scientists. Data scientists clean and prepare the data and configure the machine learning models to learn from the data.

An IBM survey by a different Wang (Dakuo Wang et al 2019) looked at “Human-AI Collaboration in Data Science: Exploring Data Scientists’ Perceptions of Automated AI”. The goal of the study was to understand data scientists current work practices and how these practices might change with Automated AI (AutoAI). Reactions were reported to be mixed with some expressing concern about the trend of automating their jobs which they also strongly felt was inevitable while others remained optimistic about their future job security due to a view that the future of data science work will be a collaboration between humans and AI systems.

What’s Up Microbes?

patyb

Health

12Jan '17

AG-Nephele-side-by-side2 There is no doubt that the little bugs that live inside our bodies and on our skin affect our health and well-being, even our state of mind, but what we want to know is, by studying them, can we prevent disease or even just a bad mood? And how can we monitor them on a daily basis? Will there be an app called “What’s up microbes?” that communicates with some new device that checks on those microbes and reports back what we should eat or if we should go see the doctor, or go for a run, or take it easy and relax to ensure we maintain a healthy microbial equilibrium?

A few months ago, I shipped my “gut microbiome” inside a narrow transparent tube via the US postal mail service to American Gut. My microbiome made the long trip from Miami to California stuck on a Q-tip. At the time, it seemed that the scientific research into this tiny new world of microbes had come a long way, but to my disappointment, I found out that there is still much to be learned. I found out that my microbiome had not survived the trip intact and had started to bloom, aka “grow new bacteria” during the trip.

In recent years, the microbiome has been featured prominently in the news as one of several paths to personalized medicine. Researchers from diverse fields such as psychology or nutrition or cancer, and many others, are trying to join the race to decipher it. There is great promise in its research, which is why the sector is receiving billions in funding, with major research initiatives in the US and worldwide. But as of today, the microbiome is still a mystery.

A 2014 article titled “20 Things you Didn’t Know About the Human Gut Microbiome” aptly describes the microbiome this way:

The microbiome is defined as all the bacteria, viruses, fungi, archaea, and eukaryotes that inhabit the human body. Collectively referred to as the “second human genome”, the gut microbiome in particular is now being considered a separate “organ” with distinct metabolic and immune activity. The two major areas of microbiota investigation include taxonomic diversity to identify “who” is there and functional metagenomics to figure out what they are doing. There are other human microbiome sites as well, including skin, oral, and vaginal, but the gut is the most popular and diverse neighborhood.

In the News: Sugar Industry Manipulated Heart Studies To Shift Blame to Fat

patyb

Health

12Sep '16

Cross-posted in Quantified-Self

After reading this article we have to worry once again how much we really know about the food we eat and the information we can trust, when evidence keeps showing up that big industries only care about profits and blatantly disregard our health:

Sugar industry secretly paid for favorable Harvard research

The food industry’s greed is so out-of-control and unchecked, that they will bribe unethical scientists to report false health information to the public. In the US, public health is not a priority, profits are a priority. The food industry is entrenched in lobbying strongholds in the US congress and will not allow passage of any new laws and regulations that reduce their profits.

But there is hope for us. The internet is helping change this trend. Movements like Quantified Self will help us discover what really makes us feel good and stay healthy! We only need to get more people to use the Internet to get informed. And we need more people asking for affordable access to personalized health information, like genetics and routine tests, and access to affordable sensors that capture personal health and fitness data.

Fitness, Diet, Clinical, Genome, Microbiome Data, it is All Yours

patyb

Health

14Jul '16

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There are ongoing efforts to merge your health data and have it in a central place. Other efforts involve transferring or exchanging your health data between hospitals and doctors and you look forward to not having to spend 20 minutes filling out the same paper form you filled out at another doctor’s office. Yes, that will happen, eventually. But should this central place that holds your data only serve your doctors or should the information it contains directly guide your life style and life choices? You have read that eventually, a smart computer will access your health data and make a faster, more accurate diagnosis or create a personalized treatment plan. You have read that such a system will make recommendations on your diet, your physical exercise regimen and even your social life and your career (work less, take time off). These recommendations will help you lead a happier, healthier and fuller life. It is already happening today, with apps like Fitbit and MyFitnessPal being pioneers in the field.

Today, doctors, clinics and hospitals have portions of your health data. It is spread across filing cabinets, devices, and the computers owned by these institutions. According to HIPPA regulations you can ask for that data but the data collected at a particular health provider belongs to him or her. Now consider this: 23andme and similar institutions have your genetic data but they don’t have your doctors’ health data. uBiome has your microbiome data but nothing else. Your Fitbit or similar fitness tracker has your fitness data but they don’t have your genetic data or your medical health history. You have been recording your weight and consumed calories in applications like MyFitnessPal, but nobody but you has that data. Ultimately, you have the right to access and own all that data and share it as you seem fit.

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