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Health informatics news

Parkinson's & Movement disorders

Automatic speech recognition learns to understand people with Parkinson's disease—by listening to them

As Mark Hasegawa-Johnson combed through data from his latest project, he was pleasantly surprised to uncover a recipe for Eggs Florentine. Sifting through hundreds of hours of recorded speech will unearth a treasure or two, ...

Genetics

Polygenic score database updates increase diversity and usability of genetic data

Important new updates to the largest open database for polygenic scores, the Polygenic Score (PGS) Catalog, could help to generate more equitable disease risk predictions for a diverse range of ethnic backgrounds.

Health informatics

AI may enhance patient safety, say researchers

Generative artificial intelligence (genAI) uses hundreds of millions, sometimes billions, of data points to train itself to produce realistic and innovative outputs that can mimic human-created content. Its applications include ...

Oncology & Cancer

Saving time with AI-generated treatment plans for breast cancer

Drawing in the organs of individual breast cancer patients and then creating precise radiation plans appears to be faster by using artificial intelligence (AI) models. That way, it remains just as reliable and accurate. It ...

Oncology & Cancer

AI could predict breast cancer risk via 'zombie cells'

Women worldwide could see better treatment with new AI technology, which enables better detection of damaged cells and more precisely predicts the risk of getting breast cancer, shows new research from the University of Copenhagen.

Health informatics

Q&A: Should we label AI systems like we do prescription drugs?

AI systems are increasingly being deployed in safety-critical health care situations. Yet these models sometimes hallucinate incorrect information, make biased predictions, or fail for unexpected reasons, which could have ...

Psychology & Psychiatry

Social media posts may provide early warning of PTSD problems

Scientists have analyzed millions of tweets to identify COVID-19 survivors living with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD)—demonstrating the effectiveness of using social media data as a tool for early screening and intervention.

Parkinson's & Movement disorders

Wearable sensors, machine learning system could pinpoint Parkinson's

Parkinson's comes on slowly, and diagnosing the often-devastating movement disorder, particularly in its early stages, usually entails having patients perform a variety of mobility tasks, observing their walking and movement ...

Health informatics

New software guards the public from airborne radiation

A software application developed by Los Alamos National Laboratory makes accurate, actionable information available after an unexpected airborne radiological release to help first responders, policymakers and health professionals ...

Medical economics

Q&A: Donor funding falls short for Africa's digital health

As African countries struggle with overburdened health care systems, limited resources, and an increasing prevalence of chronic diseases such as cancer, digital health innovations are essential.

Surgery

How applied economics maximizes kidney transplants

In the year 2000, there were 13,600 kidney transplants in the United States. Just 22 years later, that number topped 25,000—in part because of some creative thinking from Dr. Al Roth, an economist and Stanford University ...

Radiology & Imaging

Virtual staining of unlabeled autopsy tissue using AI

Autopsy has a central role in shedding light on diseases, helping to uncover the cause of death. Tissue samples from various organs are sampled, stained, and examined under a light microscope to evaluate their histological ...

Addiction

Discrimination found to smoking habits, hurting heart health

Everyday discrimination can influence unhealthy coping behaviors such as smoking, thereby increasing the risk of heart disease, according to a new study published in the Journal of the American Heart Association. However, ...

Oncology & Cancer

UK cancer treatment falls behind other countries, research finds

People in the UK have been treated with chemotherapy and radiotherapy less often than patients in comparable countries, and faced long waits for treatments, according to two new studies published in The Lancet Oncology.

Health informatics

Raising the bar for medical AI

From the invention of the wheel to the advent of the printing press to the splitting of the atom, history is replete with cautionary tales of new technologies emerging before humanity was ready to cope with them.

Health

Could AI help us prepare for the next pandemic?

The first time Elizabeth Ondula thought about using technology to improve public health was when she faced a personal tragedy during the COVID-19 pandemic. Her father died and she was unable to travel for his burial due to ...

Addiction

AI tools reveal knowledge gaps in addiction treatment

Turning to the internet for health-related information has become commonplace—from using search engines to uncover possible diagnoses based on symptoms to asking for advice on social media when dealing with health issues.

Health informatics

Colon cancer under 50: know your risks and how to prevent it

SATURDAY, Feb. 24, 2024 (HeathDay News)—Colon cancer rates are on the rise among young Americans and Americans of color, so much so that the disease is now the leading cause of cancer death for men under 50 and the second ...