Can AI Reduce Traditional Animal Testing? – The Medical Futurist Newsletter

Drug development, chemical toxicity testing, and cosmetics To give my health a boost, I'm taking a complete break from alcohol for the entire month of September. Besides that, I'll also prioritize sleep, even with a toddler around, and aim to exercise at least four times a week. This will allow me to focus on my diet and mental well-being. It's essentially [a month of total health]( and wellness rejuvenation. I've chosen to focus on alcohol because I want to challenge the idea that moderate drinking is part of a healthy lifestyle. In reality, only those who maintain a healthy lifestyle can afford to enjoy alcohol in moderation. Do you also commit to such "factory resets" now and then? I hope you will find the newsletter useful! Best regards, Berci Bertalan Meskó, PhD The Medical Futurist [THE END OF THE LAB RAT?]( --------------------------------------------------------------- How amazing it would be not to use animals in clinical trials and studies any more? Currently, around 200 million rodents, dogs, monkeys, rabbits, birds, cats, fish, and other animals are used annually mostly for cosmetics and personal products, chemical toxicity testing, drug development, and drug-discovery research. Organs-on-a-chip technologies, digital twins and in silico trials have all been leading to this direction, but we need evidence that technological means can perfectly replace using animals. [READ MORE]( WHY DO I THINK IT'S IMPORTANT? The question is not whether animal testing will be phased out of most research but when. [TONGUE DISEASE PREDICTION BASED ON MACHINE LEARNING ALGORITHMS]( --------------------------------------------------------------- In the past, physicians often used the appearance of a patient's tongue to diagnose illnesses. For example, a pale tongue might suggest anemia, while a coated tongue could indicate infection or poor digestion. Now a research group published a study about an AI tool that can do the same: look at your tongue and diagnose medical conditions from diabetes and mycotic infection to asthma, COVID-19, or anemia. The results were promising. [READ MORE]( WHY DO I THINK IT'S IMPORTANT? The trained model's accuracy rate exceeded 98%. [A SHORT GUIDE TO GENERATIVE AI IN HEALTHCARE]( --------------------------------------------------------------- This 2024 fast-track course aims to provide a hands-on introduction to the world of generative AI - in just a few hours. If you want to learn about generative AI in an easygoing way, without committing substantial amounts of time, this is for you. Give it a try, and let us know, what you think! [ENROLL HERE]( [FROM SURGERIES TO KEEPING COMPANY: THE PLACE OF ROBOTS IN HEALTHCARE]( --------------------------------------------------------------- Medical robots will soon undertake many tasks in hospitals, pharmacies, or your nearest doctor’s office, making a difference in every field of medicine. By taking over administrative, repetitive, and physically demanding tasks, robots can ease the workload of healthcare professionals, allowing them to focus more on patient care and decision-making that requires human empathy and expertise. [READ MORE]( WHY IS IT IMPORTANT? To reap the benefits and avoid the potential dangers of such a technological revolution, we need to keep ourselves informed about the strides that science makes so that we can better prepare and adapt to the medical-robotic future. [AI CAN HELP RULE OUT ABNORMAL PATHOLOGY ON CHEST X-RAYS]( --------------------------------------------------------------- What if an AI tool analyzing chest X-rays could provide autonomous reporting of pathology while having lower rate of clinically relevant errors than current standard?A new study just proved that. "Researchers in Denmark set out to estimate the proportion of unremarkable chest X-rays where AI could correctly exclude pathology without increasing diagnostic errors. The AI tool correctly excluded pathology in 24.5% to 52.7% of unremarkable chest X-rays at greater than or equal to 98% sensitivity." [READ MORE]( WHY IS IT IMPORTANT? Promising, but the mistakes made by AI were, on average, more clinically severe for the patient than mistakes made by radiologists. So there is a lot more work to be done here. [THE TOP BIOPRINTING COMPANIES]( --------------------------------------------------------------- This time we offer an unconventional market overview. We analysed the leading market players in 2018. Instead of creating a brand new list, we decided to follow up on this old article – to show what happened to the top players – good and bad developments alike. The aim is to show how extremely volatile this segment is. We considered bioprinting companies to be those working with living tissues or developing machines able to labor on living tissues. So, let’s see what happened in the past six years, and of course, we will also add the significant new players to the end of the list. [READ MORE]( WHY DO I THINK IT'S IMPORTANT? While 6 of our original 17 companies disappeared or changed fields, there is no shortage of promising new ventures. [DIGITAL THERAPEUTICS SECTOR SEES BILLING CODES AS KEY TO BREAKING FREE OF REIMBURSEMENT RUT]( --------------------------------------------------------------- It's crucial for the rise of digital therapeutics to get billing codes so reimbursement becomes possible. Now Medicare’s physician fee schedule includes billing codes for them for the first time! Rich DeNuzio, chief commercial officer of Click Therapeutics, Inc., said that digital therapeutics reimbursement is like a chicken and egg problem. "To commercialize a digital therapeutics product, you need billing codes, he said. But to get billing codes, you need to have a digital therapeutic product. Absent specific billing codes, clinicians have been forcing novel digital products into existing codes, even if they were not an exact fit. That leaves reimbursement claims subject to challenges." [READ MORE]( WHY DO I THINK IT'S IMPORTANT? Hopefully, this step could pave the way for including evidence-based digital therapeutics in the practice of medicine. MORE NEWS ABOUT THE FUTURE OF MEDICINE --------------------------------------------------------------- AI SCIENTIST – [Research AI model unexpectedly attempts to modify its own code to extend runtime]( 700+ RISKS – [The AI Risk Repository]( BEGINNING TRIALS – [The Next Frontier for mRNA Could Be Healing Damaged Organs]( UK TRIAL – [Research finds drones can deliver blood safely]( [color-forwardtofriend-48.png](mailto:berci@medicalfuturist.com) [color-facebook-48.png]( [color-youtube-48.png]( [color-linkedin-48.png]( [color-twitter-48.png]( [color-instagram-48.png]( © The Medical Futurist 2024 This email was sent to {EMAIL} [why did I get this?]( [unsubscribe from this list]( [update subscription preferences]( Medical Futurist · Budapest · Budapest, Pest 1118 · Hungary