Brain and computer moves ahead
Faster and sharper: A new brain-computer-interface technology could turn our brains into automatic image-identifying machines that operate faster than human consciousness. Researchers at Columbia University are combining the processing power of the human brain with computer vision to develop a novel device that will allow people to search through images ten times faster than they can on their own. Read more in Wired.
On the edge of life science
Sarah is doing a great job blogging the SXSW (whatever that
means) conference she’s attending. I admire that; I’ve never been able to write
coherently about what I’m listening to.
I might subtitle the meeting: The Conference of Conundrums. One of the themes
running throughout the meeting was the religious worldview vs. the scientific
worldview and the different actions they might lead to in life science. An
early panel talked about religion and intelligent design vs. evolution theory.
At the root of those views are some very different assumptions about where life
and, specifically, humans come from. Ideas about what is permissible in human
research and intervention contrast depending on which side you fall off on. So,
during a later discussion of “Regeneration and Stem Cells,” the contrasting
positions were fairly predictable. Ray Kurzweil (an engineer) and Baroness
Susan Greenfield (a neuro-biologist) debated “Enhancing Humans: How Far Should
We Go?” and the positions came close to Ray’s: whatever we can do to enhance
people that’s safe we should do vs. the baroness’: engineered interventions
will just take us closer to the chaotic cacophony we experience in contemporary
electronic life.
on those enormous issues. But the conference had a more down-to-earth theme:
the effectiveness of the life science industry. One topic was the price of
drugs. One view was that the market-driven industry has forces like investor
profits and marketing that add a cost factor that is an unfair burden on
consumers. The position of industry insiders is—not surprisingly—that the
industry is high-risk with lots of uncompensated losses and that prices are
fair given that the level of uncertainty of drug development exceeds any other
enterprise. Besides, they protest, drugs are not the source of the greatest
costs in health care. Drugs are only about 10% of the cost of care.
.
More health news portals for physicians
Turns out more and more entrepreneurs are looking to provide health information and news to physicians. I wonder how successful these products are, and if it is the nurse and physician’s assistant reading on behalf of the physician. I noticed this portal that HealthDay news service created called Physician’s Briefing – Today’s News. This provides all health news, but cancer stories are covered. I guess this portal would serve family physicians and internal medicine physicians the best – at least they would have a news digest to know what patients are hearing.
"Buddies" for clinical trials
Stowe Boyd says the center of the universe is the buddy list. Well, that might be especially true for colon cancer clinical trial participants. A new kind of mentoring program has been announced by the Colon Cancer Alliance.
Colon cancer patients considering participation in a clinical trial can
now access a first-of-its-kind peer-to-peer support system, the Buddy
Program, the Colon Cancer Alliance (CCA) announced today. As a result
of this innovation, an experienced mentor will provide guidance to
newly diagnosed patients about how to prepare for clinical trials and
understand the process. The announcement comes as the CCA marks the
seventh Annual National Colorectal Cancer Awareness Month in March.
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