Sunday, January 5, 2014

TECH/ FUTURE SPECIAL............. Do You Know What Life Will Be Like In 5 Years? IBM's Top Scientist Does (2)



Do You Know What Life Will Be Like In 5 Years? IBM's Top Scientist Does (2)


2. Doctors Will Use Your DNA To Keep You Well
In the next five years, genetic sequencing and cognitive computing will make personalized medicine available at a scale and speed that was never previously possible.
Despite tremendous advances in cancer research and treatment, every year nearly 13 million new cases of cancer are diagnosed and 8 million people die from various forms of the complex disease. With growing aging populations, global cancer rates are expected to jump by an astounding 75% by 2030. Cancer also represents about 20% of all health care costs, placing a heavy burden on governments, health systems, providers, and patients.
 

Initial diagnoses of diseases like this, today, are often inaccurate, and treatment is prescribed in a one-size-fits-all manner. "We have historically attacked cancer based on symptoms and the location of the disease. This can result in costly treatment that is ineffective and could even be harmful."
 
Researchers believe that in the next five years, the integration of genetic sequencing with cloud-based cognitive systems will help doctors accurately diagnose cancer and create individualized treatment plans for millions of patients around the world.
Even better: the system will continually learn and get smarter, so the standard of care for patients with cancer--and any disease with a DNA link, like heart disease and stroke--will continue to climb.
“Health care is a tremendous opportunity,” says Meyerson. "You've already heard these sort of miraculous results people are getting in treatment of various bloodborne cancers--leukemia, lymphoma--where people are taking the genetic makeup of either the actual cells that are essentially problematic, the cancer cells, and/or your genetic makeup, and from that they can actually determine what the most effective treatments will be based on that genetic knowledge.”
“At the end of the day it all comes down to the ability to not only custom design a treatment, but to also look at a seemingly infinite number of treatments that have been performed on a specific disease and very quickly, through the use of analytics, determine which one of those is proven to be on average the most effective,” Meyerson explains. “Once you get the amount of information that's out there correlated and take these unstructured doctors' notes and other things like that and use them, it will be a real game changer.” 
 http://www.fastcoexist.com/3023514/futurist-forum/do-you-know-what-life-will-be-like-in-5-years-ibms-top-scientist-does?partner=newsletter

No comments: