Bench Press

During the past month’s global swine flu emergency providing health care professionals around the world with accurate information was critical to understanding and potentially containing the outbreak. The time sensitive nature of dealing with an emerging disease highlighted the importance of developing an effective communication channel that is quick, accurate, and accessible by numerous individuals. Traditional paper distribution channels, mailing notifications to primary care physicians, can delay the receipt of time sensitive materials by 72-96 hours. Thus, the question becomes how do you design a system that can be accessed quickly and easily by a maximum number of health care professionals, while still providing quality information.

A new web application developed by the Indiana Health Information Exchange (IHIE) interfacing with a service called Docs4Docs®, provided by the Regenstrief Institute, appears to have answered that question. The IHIE’s web portal allows electronic communication of public health messages to any registered health care provider. Registered users can also send messages back through the portal to be disseminated across the network. The web portal’s simplicity allows it to bridge the gap between paper-based and electronic-based medical offices thereby ensuring that even doctors in rural areas without advanced IT infrastructure can receive and contribute critical information.

Docs4Docs® also leverages the Indiana Network for Patient Care (INPC) which is a secure community health records system, providing patient data whenever needed. Dr. Shaun Grannis, a Regenstrief researcher, explains “[b]y working with our public health partners to seamlessly deliver public health alerts in precisely the same manner that physicians receive time-sensitive clinical information for patient care, we ensure that physicians have the right information at the time they need to see it”. This was exemplified by the first electronic health alert sent out across the Docs4Docs® network with regards to the emerging H1N1 crisis on April 29, 2009.

Last year Regenstrief scientists received a $10 million, 5 year contract from the Centers for Disease Control in order to continue working on developing electronic records and notification systems like those that make up the backbone of the Docs4Docs® service in Indiana. I for one believe that money is going to good use and look forward to seeing other states follow Indiana’s lead with regards to developing new electronic records and notification systems.

When most people think of laboratory/medical equipment, they think of massive machines full of sophisticated electronics and gear. But, thanks to Moore’s Law (which helps electronics get smaller, cheaper, and more power efficient), equipment that formerly required massive machinery, may be duplicated in the form of handheld devices, like this USB ultrasound gear from Laborie Medical Technologies (FDA approved):

LMT bundles software with their ultrasound probes to deliver images on PCs running Windows XP, but to use it on a phone you’ll need software from William Richard’s group from Washington University in St. Louis, who, with funding from Microsoft, have created a client allowing you to access ultrasound images on Windows Mobile devices! They’ve even released an SDK to help other enterprising researchers create other applications which can make use of these portable UltraSound devices and have them work on any Windows Mobile phone with a USB interface!

Such gear could bring ultrasound access to countries or regions lacking significant healthcare infrastructure, and similar devices could dramatically change how biomedical research is conducted.

For more information, read the presentation that David M. Zar gave at the Medical Records Institute’s TEPR+ (Towards the Electronic Patient Record) conference, and check out the live video demonstration as well as the UltraSoundUSB page on YouTube:

Let’s hope this is only the first in a long line of portable electronics interfacing with readily available mobile phone technology.

(Image credit – The Daily What)

Introducing today’s contestants…the IBM QA system Watson? That’s right folks. Our friends at IBM, not content with simply creating a supercomputer capable of defeating humans at Go, have taken it a step further and are currently creating a supercomputer (codenamed Watson) with the goal of it having the ability to beat humans at a game of Jeopardy!. [IBM Video on Watson at the bottom]

The interesting thing about this particular problem is, unlike with games of Go and Chess which have clearly defined rules and discrete moves/outcomes, playing a game of Jeopardy requires an understanding of semantics which has traditionally been relegated to the human domain.

Admittedly, there are natural language processing solutions out there. But at the end of the day, we’re a long way off from the computers displayed in Star Trek which can:

• Understand spoken words – This is a very challenging problem. How do you instruct a computer to not just comprehend words, but comprehend actual meaning to those words (semantics). The ability to understand that the “can” in “I can do it” is very different from the “can” in “soda can”, or that “being on pins and needles” is just an expression, or to even understand when a sentence is a question versus a statement are very deep problems. But this is only the beginning of Watson’s challenges, for Watson must also be able to…
• Search a massive database for relevant information – Merely searching a database for a list of possible results is a tractable problem that many database/search engines have already solved (e.g. searching for “Indian economy” on Google’s search engine). Searching a large database to find a particular answer behind the reams of data is much harder (e.g. understanding that “Economic Output” can be measured by a country’s GDP).
• Understand the relevant information – Just as it’s harder to understand Quantum Theory than it is to merely read the papers, IBM’s Watson must be able to parse the information that it’s found from its database. For instance, if asked to compare India’s economic output to its neighbors, a computer must not only understand that economic output is GDP, it must also understand what “neighbors” means in the context of India, understand that GDP may be “real” or “nominal” and may need to be adjusted by currency, and understand what it means to “compare” GDP’s.
• Formulate a response – This is related to the first ask, but is more challenging. Just as its harder to memorize the Bible than it is to recognize specific passages, IBM’s Watson must do more than just recognize/understand words – it must be able to create its own sentences which use the relevant information and understanding its developed.

The task is challenging, but not impossible. Already, researchers have demonstrated computers which have been able to do the scientific method (hypothesize –> experiment/test –> analyze –> formulate new hypotheses) all on their own. Granted, the scientific problem explored was more systematic in nature (and had a more well-defined solution set than a game of Jeopardy) as it was focused on finding missing pieces in metabolic networks, but the fact that a computer was capable of performing basic high level logic is very promising for fields of research (although threatening to lab techs and uncreative grad students everywhere) which were formerly intractable due to their scope (e.g. mapping out the human proteome or transcriptome).

“The essence of making decisions is recognizing patterns in vast amounts of data, sorting through choices and options, and responding quickly and accurately,” said Samuel J. Palmisano, IBM Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer. “Watson is a compelling example of how the planet—companies, industries, cities—is becoming smarter. With advanced computing power and deep analytics, we can infuse business and societal systems with intelligence. This project is the latest example of IBM’s longstanding commitment to fundamental research and to overcoming ‘grand challenges’ in science and technology.”

Although I don’t know how well Watson would fare against Ken Jennings, Watson’s completion would be a landmark in artificial intelligence. It’ll be interesting to see if IBM’s Watson does as well as IBM promises. Although I don’t know how well Watson would fare against Ken Jennings, Watson’s completion would be a landmark in artificial intelligence and computer science. Watson may pave the way to an age where computers can actively aid doctors diagnose patients or help business executives make financial decisions (which is probably what IBM is going for here).

(Image Credit) (Video)

The most amazing thing about social media services like Twitter and Friendfeed is how rapidly you can find interesting articles and links. One of my good friends on Twitter, Charles Ju, recently pointed me to a picture which he only described as “this picture blows my mind”.

And sure enough, it completely blew my mind. I re-shared it on my own FriendFeed (garnering a couple of comments/responses from my own Twitter followers and Friendfeed friends) If you didn’t understand the scale of the universe before, this will put it all into perspective:

A big wow for:

1. How powerful social media services like Twitter and Friendfeed are for disseminating cool information/factoids/images
2. How vast the universe is
3. The capability of the Hubble Space Telescope to amass information about our universe

PS: If you’d like to follow the Bench Press authors on Friendfeed/Twitter you can follow me at http://www.friendfeed.com/benjamintseng, Kevin at http://friendfeed.com/ktseng, and Anthony at http://friendfeed.com/atphan.