For upwards of a century modern healthcare has been driven by the illusive goal of curing the incurable. Yet, diseases such as cancer have yet to be beaten. The tech giants of today are planning on changing that, though. Perhaps computer science-driven data will be able accomplish what we have yet to accomplish via the traditional beaker and test tube.
Microsoft
In a mere ten years, Microsoft is hoping to “solve” cancer. The amount of cancer research that has been published is far more than what any doctor could possibly read in a lifetime. But, it’s not enough data to overwhelm a computer.
“The complex processes that happen in cells have some similarity to those that happen in a standard desktop computer,” Chris Bishop, head of Microsoft Research’s Cambridge-based lab, told Fast Company.
You read that right, part of Microsoft’s plan is to treat the problem of cancer like the problem of a computer virus. Potentially, computers may be able to understand and predict the patterns of cancerous cells.
The search engine’s main niche in the healthcare industry has been to combat diabetes, which is one of the most prevalent health issues of our day. They’ve partnered with French pharmaceutical group Sanofi in the hopes of creating a diabetes-fighting dream team.
Google is playing it smart by sticking to what it does best: gathering data. By allowing healthcare experts to take advantage of their algorithms and massive data-collecting abilities, they should be able to streamline the process so that professionals can move on to diagnosis and patient care more quickly than ever.
Chan Zuckerberg Biohub
The power couple, Mark Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan, have lofty goals for their initiative. Namely, to cure, manage, and prevent all diseases by the end of the century.
Zuckerberg has noted that 50 times more funding goes to treatment, than it does to prevention. That’s where Biohub seeks to be a novel addition to the industry: by focusing in on how big data and machine-learning can stop diseases, before they can hurt people.
The aforementioned are just a few examples that point to a future where healthcare and tech companies are a unified front. In the future data will have the ability to effect change like never before.
“Think genomic, proteomic, metabolic data, clinical trial data, imaging data, electronic health records and wearable, self-tracking data, not to mention Google search data, credit history, geolocation and population behaviour information,” says Chemistry World.
That’s way, way more than any analyst could ever successfully survey. It’s more than any team could ever study in an all-encompassing manner. But it’s the kind of information set that tech companies are ready and willing to grapple with.
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