IBM's Watson now an API for cloud development - is there a Doctor in the House?

I am still trying to pin down a focus on eHealth application for this, but IBM has opened an API (application program interface) for the Watson cognitive computing intelligence. This sounds like developers can open up smartphone applications to query the cognitive fireworks of the Watson computer that defeated the best humans in the world of TV game Jeopardy. 

For eHealth, the API needs to tap into the right data content. IBM already has several services for this:

MD Buyline: This provider of supply chain solutions for hospitals and healthcare systems is developing an app to allow clinical and financial users to make real-time, informed decisions about medical device purchases, to improve quality, value, outcomes and patient satisfaction.Hippocrates powered by IBM Watson will provide users with access to a helpful research assistant that provides fast, evidence based recommendations from a wealth of data, to help ensure medical organizations are making the best decisions for their physicians' and patients' needs. 

Guess there's not much else you could ask for? But yes there is - Welltok:

Welltok: A pioneer in the emerging field of Social Health Management™, Welltok is developing an app that will create Intelligent Health Itineraries™ for consumers. These personalized itineraries, sponsored by health plans, health systems and health retailers, will include tailored activities, relevant content and condition management programs, and will reward users for engaging in healthy behaviors. Consumers who use Welltok's app -- CaféWell Concierge powered by IBM Watson – will participate in conversations about their health with Watson. By leveraging Watson's ability to learn from every interaction, the app will offer insights tailored to each individual’s health needs.  

And there is more. Watson Path is diagnostic education program, and perhaps even a clinical decision support aid for diagnosis? All this from a game of Jeopardy?

Is US Homeland Security Accessing Canadian Personal Health Information?

There is a disturbing story about how more than several Canadians have been denied entry to the United States by Homeland Security because of the information they held on their medical condition. You can read an instance of the story < here >. Ontario Privacy Commission Dr. Ann Cavoukian says it is a "matter of grave concern". I find it quite shocking too. Actual facts may point to Homeland Security receiving the medical condition information through 911 call records, and not somehow directly accessing medical records (as the story might suppose), but still...

A digital umbilical cord for life extension

A project at Lifenaut aims to create a digital image vault of your life history where avatars of the future will live forever. At least, that is my interpretation. It reminded me of a project Ray Kuzweil has to bring his father back to life. He has a store room full of bankers boxes of information about him. Probably that is all digitized now. This is not an actual eHealth application like the Virtual Self, which can be used for diagnostic simulations.

Create a Mind File

How it Works

Upload biographical pictures, videos, and documents to a digital archive that will be preserved for generations.

Organize through geo mapping, timelines, and tagging, a rich portrait of information about you. The places you’ve been and the people you’ve met can be stored.

Create a computer-based avatar to interact and respond with your attitudes, values, mannerisms and beliefs.

Connect with other people who are interested in exploring the future of technology and how it can enhance the quality of our lives.

Future Med Conference at Hotel Del Coronado in San Diego

The future med conference this year is at the Hotel Del Coronado in San Diego. The Core Track of the conference is very eHealth relevant:

• Introduction to Exponentials on the topics of Artificial Intelligence, Robotics, 3D Printing, and IT Data Driven Health 
• Future of Oncology 
• Personalized Medicine 
• Mobile Health & Body Computing 
• Design Thinking and Tech Integration (i.e. Google Glass in Healthcare) 
• Future of Intervention 
• NeuroMedTech 
• Regenerative Medicine 
• Future of Pharma & Clinical Trials
•  Global Health Impact of Technology on the Practice of Medicine 

I had heard that San Diego is a great place for conferences, but what I think is the real star of this conference is the Hotel! The Del Coronado is made of wood - over a hundred years old - and it's on the beach!

Now, this conference is going to set you back $4500 as an ordinary registrant for the four days. The last time I went to a 4 day conference happened to be in Boston. Paid by my institution, it was over $1000. It had stellar presentations and I will never forget the keynote presentation by Dr. Judah Folkman who talked about how the Institutional Review Board at his university (Harvard), instead of doing it's usual rubber stamp bureaucratic handling of a research protocol, made recommendations to the scientist that actually lead to the permanent end of a terminal illness that affected kids. I digress. What I mean is, unless you are paying the VIP price of over $8000 dollars, you might get a valuable experience without feeling like you've been robbed at this conference.

And that VIP experience made me think of a TV program I was watching the other day - more and more digression but this has an eHealth element - CPAC channel actually, which is a dedicated Canadian politics channel, that featured a live broadcast from the United Nations on Maternal Health. On the same panel with our Prime Minister Stephen Harper was Melinda Gates. Melinda spoke about how she personally observed how simple cell phone and text messaging used by women in Kenya/Tanzania was leading to all kinds of health improvements. Exactly! It is Communications Technology that is needed, as well as the vaccines and the mosquito nets. There is your eHealth element.

But what this made me also think about - and there is no eHealth dimension to this really (except maybe the Science fiction movie Elysium again - is the book I am reading "Plutocrats: The Rise of the New Global Super-Rich and the Fall of Eveyrone Else" by Chrystia Freeland. Maybe I thought, the Future Med conference is one of those Davos / TED / Gilded Age kind of meeting places on the Global circuit. Perhaps not, but digression will now cease.

eHealth Sources of Wellness

Disclaimer: opinions expressed here do not necessarily represent the policy of McMaster University, where I am employed.

I was checking the student wellness website at McMaster and immediately saw the eHealth application and benefit. First, there was a list of apps for smartphones on wellness and fitness <here>. Since I don't have a smartphone I can't testify about the worth of these apps. All I know is that everybody (and their dog) these days you see on the street is staring more at a phone than anything else in the environment. McMaster's employees website also have excellent resources for health and wellness, part of that movement toward corporate wholeness and a healthy workplace.

Another one of the great resources I found on the McMaster website was a link to a depression symptom checker. Now, that is the sort of thing you can find on some of the major consumer health websites, but this depression checklist was very good - had received research testing, face validity, evaluation etc. Problem is, I can't find the link to it now, but it was kind of like this one < here >. Maybe that is why people use the common consumer health websites - stuff is easy to find there. The thing is, if depression is part of ones' own personal health inventory, these should be integrated into one's personal health record, which should be easy to find, and accessed as often as one uses a tooth brush.

Should a personal health record also include apps and records for wellness and fitness, and counselling resources, and yoga videos, dental x-rays, MMR shots, etc.? Yes I think they should. This was also a question I once asked the late Kevin Leonard at a health informatics conference. At that time people at the conference were thinking mostly about personal health records as portal views of the physician's electronic medical record. Kevin thought everything related to one's health should be accessible in a electronic health record. Dr. Leonard was one of the leading advocates for personal wellness in the age of electronic health records. When I learned that he died of complications from pneumonia and that he had Crohns, I can understand more his personal mission. Why can't there just be One Record? < Patient Destiny >

Surgery transmitted by Google glass

Google glass apparently wasn't used here first, according to a poster at the Kurzweil site:

Great accomplishment BUT not the 1st time! It was a FutureMed/Singularity grad who performed the first Surgery s GoogleGlass! See:
Google Glass In The Operating Room! http://t.co/bMR64jVCTQ
&in Med Ed”OK Glass:Teach me Medicine!” http://t.co/0vYPZcrzKk

The spanish Clinica Cemtro looks like an interesting organization with eHealth applications like this, even though I am not sure how this can be applied in the future.

Crowdsourcing rare diseases for patients - Crowdmed

I recently discovered two crowdsourcing sites for medicine after starting to wonder how it would work in an ehealth type of application. Strangely, they both have a similiar name and function if I am not mistaken, medcrowd.com and crowdmed.com.  I am going to talk a little about Crowdmed as it looks more interesting.

https://www.crowdmed.com/

To my mind, this is a very powerful crowdsourcing site to fetch opinions on rare medical conditions without an IBM Dr. Watson nearby. Is is a trusted source of information? I wouldn't know, but I like the way the site works, according to this article in the new scientist:

Anyone can join CrowdMed and analyse cases, regardless of their background or training. Participants are given points that they can then use to bet on the correct diagnosis from lists of suggestions. This creates a prediction market, with diagnoses falling and rising in value based on their popularity, like stocks in a stock market. Algorithms then calculate the probability that each diagnosis will be correct.

Here is the welcome email from the founder and CEO Jared Heyman:

Here’s a quick refresher on how CrowdMed works:

1. Patients complete a questionnaire, which collects information regarding their symptoms, medical history, family history, basic demographics, medications, and lifestyle.
2. Once a case is submitted, CrowdMed invites hundreds of Medical Detectives (“MDs”) to recommend potential diagnoses and bet on the ones they think are most likely.
3. CrowdMed’s patented prediction market technology harnesses ‘the wisdom of crowds’ and provides patients with a short list of the most likely diagnostic suggestions to discuss with their doctor.

I started CrowdMed because I watched my younger sister, Carly, suffer through three years of debilitating symptoms, visits to two dozen doctors and specialists, and over $100,000 in medical bills before she was finally diagnosed with a rare but treatable illness. She was CrowdMed’s first test case, and our phenomenal community of Medical Detectives collaborated to accurately solve her case in just a few days, proving that large crowds working to solve a problem are often smarter than even the most expert individual. I want to share CrowdMed with other patients so they don’t have the same experience Carly had. Read more about CrowdMed’s story.

To get started, log in to CrowdMed and choose ‘Solve a case’ or ‘Submit a case’. And don’t forget -- for every 1,000 points you win solving cases on CrowdMed, you can donate $1.00 to the patient of your choice on Watsi and potentially help save two lives at once.

We love to help bring patients one step closer to the right diagnosis and treatment, so please visit CrowdMed today!

Together, we can help save lives.

Jared Heyman

Founder, CrowdMed