Sharing patient data by applying machine learning in hospitals

Federated learning is a new and promising approach to make the adoption of machine learning and patient data sharing possible in the medical field.

Despite the widely popular application of AI and Machine Learning across industries, the healthcare sector always hesitates to embrace the technology of the future due to privacy problems. The concern for patient confidentiality has always been the dilemma impeding the adoption of machine learning or the potentials and the power to transform the healthcare landscape.

Sharing patient data by applying machine learning (Photo: HealthCatalyst)

Federated learning comes as the solutions for the dilemma as the technology generates almost identical results as the method that is not protected does. Federated learning was first used by Google to train an algorithm through several decentralized computers containing local data samples, without sharing them. And the method shows great potentials in brain imaging,  analyzing magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scans of brain tumor patients and distinguish healthy brain tissue from cancerous regions.

For instance, doctors in different parts of the world can enter their patient scan data, training on a shared model, then the new model will be transferred to a centralized one. By doing that, the model has gained the knowledge front he hospital and generate useful clinical data.  "Traditionally, machine learning has used data from a single institution, and then it became apparent that those models do not perform or generalize well on data from other institutions.", said Spyridon Bakas.

In regard to tumor boundaries, Bakas the opinion not only varies from person to person but also differs from one day to another of the same doctor. "Artificial Intelligence allows a physician to have more precise information about where a tumor ends, which directly affects a patient's treatment and prognosis.". He said.

In the research to study the effectiveness of the new technology, the outcomes that have been produced by federated learning are little to no significant differences compared to the other methods. The technology opens a new promising field that needs more study, expanding the application of the use cases and industries other than healthcare.

Source: Science Daily.

About us: TMA Solutions was established in 1997 to provide quality software outsourcing services to leading companies worldwide. We are one of the largest software outsourcing companies in Vietnam with 2,500 engineers.

Visit us at https://www.tmasolutions.com/

Read More

AI to enhance customer experience (Part 2)

Artificial intelligence is expected to transform the industry landscapes ranging from retail, healthcare to manufacturing. 

With AI, businesses from a number of sectors are optimizing consumer service by speeding the processing of activities, gaining more insight into customer attitudes and expectations, and offering innovative applications to improve customer experience.

Making online car purchasing easier

For the automotive industry, the in-person customer experience is key in convincing a potential lead to come to a buying decision. Given the current pandemic situation where people are trying their best to avoid human-to-human interaction, technologies preventing the risk of contraction thrive across all sectors including. And AI strategy plays an important role in transforming the marketing digital channel of car dealers to attract and approaching customers.

Many customers who do not own a vehicle are now considering owning one because of limited or abandoned use of public transport, and are looking to perform purchases online and reasonably quickly. The application of AI tools including an online chatbot that invites shoppers addresses general questions and gathers lead information on behalf of car dealers to direct customers to relevant information based on their interests and needs. The algorithm is being constantly changed and evolved to help clients find the right choices.

Making online car purchasing easier (Photo: Autocar)

Moving data entry to bots to add efficiency

As part of its customer engagement policy, healthcare providers have used automation to simplify the delivery of acute and outpatient registrations and therapeutic forms. 

Robotic process automation (RPA) is being adopted to deliver customized texts to patients with the clinical forms required for various types of visits. “We are reducing the time needed in clinic ahead of the visit, which provides tremendous patient satisfaction. Our patients like completing this work when it’s convenient for them.”, Smith said. In another word, the healthcare industry is moving the role of data entry from conventional caregivers to bots, resulting in substantial efficiencies and savings.

Source: CIO ASEAN

About us: TMA Solutions was established in 1997 to provide quality software outsourcing services to leading companies worldwide. We are one of the largest software outsourcing companies in Vietnam with 2,500 engineers.

Visit us at https://www.tmasolutions.com/

Read More

Artificial Intelligence Translates Thoughts Into Text Using Brain Implant

 Researchers at the leading university had developed the AI to decipher up to 250 words in real-time from a set of between 30 and 50 sentences.

Mind-reading AI can turn the neural activity into sentences with a 97 percent accuracy rate. Scientists have developed an artificial intelligence system that can translate a person’s thoughts into text by analyzing their brain activity.  The algorithm was trained using the neural signals of four women with electrodes implanted in their brains, which were already in place to monitor epileptic seizures.

The volunteers repeatedly read sentences aloud while the researchers fed the brain data to the AI to unpick patterns that could be associated with individual words. The average word error rate across a repeated set was as low as 3 percent.

“A decade after the speech was first decoded from human brain signals, accuracy and speed remain far below that of natural speech,” states a paper detailing the research, published this week in the journal Nature Neuroscience.

“Taking a cue from recent advances in machine translation, we trained a recurrent neural network to encode each sentence-length sequence of neural activity into an abstract representation, and then to decode this representation, word by word, into an English sentence.”

AI now can translate thoughts into text using a brain implant. (Photo: Newscientist.com)

The average active vocabulary of an English speaker is estimated to be around 20,000 words, meaning the system is a long way off being able to understand regular speech. Researchers are unsure about how well it will scale up, as the decoder relies on learning the structure of a sentence and using it to improve its predictions. This means that each new word increases the number of possible sentences, therefore reducing the overall accuracy.

“Although we should like the decoder to learn and to exploit the regularities of the language, it remains to show how much data would be required to expand from our tiny languages to a more general form of English,” the paper states. One possibility could be to combine it with other brain-computer interface technologies that use different types of implants and algorithms.

Last year, a report by the Royal Society claimed that neural interfaces linking human brains to computers will enable mind reading between people. The report cited technologies currently being developed by Elon Musk’s Neuralink startup and Facebook, who describe cyborg telepathy as “the next great wave in human-oriented computing”.

The Royal Society estimated that such interfaces will be an “established option” for treating diseases like Alzheimer’s within two decades.

“People could become telepathic to some degree, able to converse not only without speaking but without words,” the report stated while expanding on more futuristic applications like being able to virtually taste and smell without physically experiencing the sensation.

Source: Independent UK

About us: TMA Solutions was established in 1997 to provide quality software outsourcing services to leading companies worldwide. We are one of the largest software outsourcing companies in Vietnam with 2,500 engineers.

Visit us at https://www.tmasolutions.com/

Read More

Software prevents accidents from autonomous vehicles (Part 2)

Before participating in road traffic, autonomous vehicles must demonstrate that they do not harm the others on the road. New software prevents accidents by predicting different variants of a traffic situation every millisecond. The other methodologies are shown in part 2 as below.

Using software to prevent accidents from autonomous vehicles (Photo: Emerj)

Streamlined models for swift calculations

This kind of detailed traffic situation forecasting was previously considered too time-consuming and thus impractical. But now, the Munich research team has shown not only the theoretical viability of real-time data analysis with simultaneous simulation of future traffic events: They have also demonstrated that it delivers reliable results.

The quick calculations are made possible by simplified dynamic models. So-called reachability analysis is used to calculate potential future positions a car or a pedestrian might assume. When all characteristics of the road users are taken into account, the calculations become prohibitively time-consuming. That is why Althoff and his team work with simplified models. These are superior to the real ones in terms of their range of motion -- yet, mathematically easier to handle. This enhanced freedom of movement allows the models to depict a larger number of possible positions but includes the subset of positions expected for actual road users.

Real traffic data for a virtual test environment

For their evaluation, the computer scientists created a virtual model based on real data they had collected during test drives with an autonomous vehicle in Munich. This allowed them to craft a test environment that closely reflects everyday traffic scenarios. "Using the simulations, we were able to establish that the safety module does not lead to any loss of performance in terms of driving behavior, the predictive calculations are correct, accidents are prevented, and in emergency situations the vehicle is demonstrably brought to a safe stop," Althoff sums up.

The computer scientist emphasizes that the new security software could simplify the development of autonomous vehicles because it can be combined with all standard motion control programs.

Source: Science Daily.

About us: TMA Solutions was established in 1997 to provide quality software outsourcing services to leading companies worldwide. We are one of the largest software outsourcing companies in Vietnam with 2,500 engineers.

Visit us at https://www.tmasolutions.com/

Read More

AI to enhance customer experience (Part 1)

 AI is expected to help improve digital customer experience during the pandemic.

Virtual waiting rooms and texting chatbots

In virtual waiting rooms, Mobile chatbots connect with patients in a manner that help them with digitized forms, remote control capability for both telehealth and in-person visits. The initiative is part of the intention to provide treatment to patients in response to the pandemic. Healthcare companies need to rapidly evolve and make sure that all patients can see their physicians through secure, private and accessible networks, said Jeff Johnson, Vice President of Digital Business at Banner Health.

The mobile chatbot assistant has replaced the traditional pre-visit process of staying in waiting rooms, filling out forms, etc. Chatbots can now interact with patients via their mobile devices and desktop monitor to substitute tasks that were previously done by humans. Digital triaging is another application of AI in healthcare. While people engage with the symptom checker, AI will present them with the potential causes of the symptoms and how they can better be treated, whether it is at one of the hospital emergency locations, a primary care practitioner in their medical network, emergency departments, or by self-management.

Chatbots are being applied in hospitals to aid with the overload situation (Photo: Take)

Analyzing online actions to enhance service

The digital transformation has pushed businesses to transform their customer loyalty through e-commerce strategy. Retailers have begun using AI-based tools to understand their customers through online behaviors. But it was the pandemic that drives the customers to online shopping, urging vendors to try even harder to examine how their customers interact with the website.

The adoption of AI technologies has been integrated into every step of the customer journey, including all the details, actions on the user interface. 

Though the idea seems promising in the retail industry, it is often perceived doubtful by vendors since there is little real-life application of these technologies, especially AI and deep learning that bring measurable outcomes. However, more and more retailers are now willing to take risks with the hope of transforming their business or, better yet, reverse the impacts of the pandemic on their operation in general.  

Source: CIO ASEAN

About us: TMA Solutions was established in 1997 to provide quality software outsourcing services to leading companies worldwide. We are one of the largest software outsourcing companies in Vietnam with 2,500 engineers.

Visit us at https://www.tmasolutions.com/

Read More