Application of Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality

Welcome to this course on AI Health. My name is David Hall. And I’m here at Taipei Medical University. We’re talking today about AI health. This is an exciting area especially here in Asia. We are recording this from Taiwan. Asia is the number two area in the world for healthcare investing heavily in AI, internet of medical things, augmented and virtual reality. These are the areas that are exciting that we are working on. We are developing smart clinics plus smart labs and we’re working with the teams here at Taipei Medical University to integrate artificial intelligence. Now what would this mean? How can we apply AR/VR, when most people think of augmented and virtual reality, they think of training and development?

We’re now able to use this technology real time where you need it, when you need it, with the aid of augmented and virtual reality with the aid of artificial intelligence and other emerging technologies. One of the applications is allowing us to walk through the human genome. For instance, you can come into our smart clinic, you can have a one-hour genetic blood test that blood tests can be analyzed it can be connected with a global database, genetic database from the US and other parts of the world. We can run machine learning, Big Data, artificial intelligence and we can have those results within one hour after that hour, you can literally be walking through your human genome together with your physician.

You will have all the results. Your physician will be able to explain to you which biomarkers that you have, what the meaning of those are and how you might be able to change your, your lifestyle, how you might be able to to add in certain supplements or if there are, for instance, certain drugs that are targeted for these biomarkers that will be available to you. We call this full doctor-patient immersion, so it’s going to change the way that doctors and patients interact. If you look at the history of how we’ve developed ideas, we began with with discovery. So, you know everything that was it could be discovered was discovered. Then we went through phases of experimentation.

With AI, that’s just no longer feasible. AI is very very powerful. There have been many many studies, where AI has outperformed physicians so in this digital era, we’re forced to change. We now need to recombine ideas. So it’s really about multidisciplinary approaches, innovative collaboration synthesis. With AI humans now need to work together, human and machine interaction but they also need to innovate, they need to recombine ideas and they need to synthesize ideas to keep up with AI, and to work together with AI, for precision, preventative health care. This is going to allow physicians to target specific genes and together customized an individualized preventative wellness program or treatment program together with the the patient.

This is really a holistic view and especially here in Asia. They have always taken with Eastern medicine taken the the holistic view or what we call the macro view versus the West, which tends to take the micro view treating the disease and not treating the whole patient. AI and these types of emerging technologies together with innovation allow us to have access to more data, to more knowledge, to more wisdom, so that we’re treating the entire patient. And it’s really an ecosystem. A lot of people when they think of these technologies they just see the tip of the iceberg.

We’re now required to to integrate all different types of technology whether it’s MRI data, CT scans, other types of images into into the the technologies that we’re using and AI really applies to all of these areas especially which within healthcare so we need to integrate databases. We’ve been working on this. This has been a trend for the past, you know 20 years, and now it’s more important than ever. From the time a patient is admitted, to the time they’re, you know, treated, till the time they leave, you know, we need continuity; we need access to all of that data.

to big data so that we can you come up with the results and use machine learning, to use supervised learning and unsupervised learning and now we’re getting into knockout and knockdown genes, using CRISPR, telehealth, telemedicine, wearable devices, IOT, wearable devices to monitor patients vitals and diagnostics from home, having a doctor in your pocket 24/7. Especially, using AI for for diagnosis using NLP, natural language processing, or chatbot, so you can chat on the AI algorithm will suggests certain diagnosis for you, so it’s essentially doing the triage upfront so this saves the physician a lot of time when you come in, it’s going to be, to the smart clinic or the smart hospital.

It’s going to be an interaction with the the physician on a whole different level. And then once you leave, there’s going to be ongoing monitoring and that physician will have access to accurate EHR electronic health records and will create working on creating a digital twin, so you will have a digital twin.

You can look at a 3D or 360 image of your, of your body and you can see what, what you’ve had done you know what wellness steps I might want to take and we’re incorporating the predictive AI so now, it’s not only about having the knowledge but the the wisdom, to being able to predict what might happen, what procedures, what I might want to have done what checkup sites I might want to have what lifestyles that I may want to to change.

So we need to look at the not only the tip of the iceberg but we need to look at all of the the underlying technologies that go into this and the, really the the wave is smart clinics on smart labs So it’s about End to End solutions. You’ll come into a smart clinic, you will go through a series of diagnostics, vitals have say a one-hour genetic blood test and then you’ll be walking through your genome within one hour in either augmented or virtual reality. You can take this home on your your mobile phone. So it’s really phone, iPad, full immersive…

like environment that you can get in physicians are even using this to develop biotechnology, MDS, PhDs, research scientists and physicians to develop new technology and new bio technologies, new pharmaceuticals where you can model the the pharmaceutical. And you can get in these fully immersive environments and you can communicate, say from Taipei to New York and it may be a group of physicians; it may be a group of researchers at a biotech company a pharmaceutical company. And they’re able to to collaborate, using you know voice over IP.

We have world-renowned experts from healthcare medical biotech because now as we talked about, it’s about recombination. It’s about synthesis. So it’s a cross company. It’s cross industry cross-cultural multidisciplinary we really need to be all things to all people we’ve got to be a generalist and a specialist to be able to keep up. We really need to to disrupt ourselves.