AI & PRECISION MEDICINE TO USHER IN A NEW HEALTHCARE

The UAE’s Mohamed bin Zayed University of Artificial Intelligence (MBZUAI) is revolutionising personalised medicine by combining computer vision, machine learning, causal learning, and natural language processing. Here’s how.

By Professor Kun Zhang, MBZUAI (Mohamed bin Zayed University of Artificial Intelligence) Acting Chair Of Machine Learning, Professor Of Machine Learning, And Director Of The Center For Integrative Artificial Intelligence (CIAI)

Artificial intelligence (AI) is making great strides in tailoring healthcare and medicine to the specific needs of individuals to deliver better care for the world’s growing – and rapidly ageing – population.

Using A I disciplines including computer vision, machine learning, causal learning, and natural language processing, we can better understand the causes of illness and disease and design effective, targeted treatments that cause minimal side effects.

At Mohamed bin Zayed University of Artificial Intelligence (MBZUAI), we are using AI to gain new, and more nuanced, insights and greater understanding of human physiology, disease, and its effects on individuals and populations.

By 2030, the World Health Organization (WHO) predicts that one sixth of the global population will be aged 60 years or over, placing additional strain on healthcare services in many countries around the world. AI enables solutions with increased efficiency and innovation across all areas of healthcare, from diagnosis, to delivering personalised treatment, monitoring patients, and developing new drugs and treatments that would – without AI – take many more years and dollars to develop.

At MBZUAI, we are using AI to develop and use large biological models for drug discovery and precision medicine, as well as developing digital models of human beings to learn more about specific conditions and the effectiveness of treatments.

AI is unique in its ability to analyse vast quantities of data, learning to spot patterns that can help healthcare professionals to predict and detect an array of conditions, see the underlying causal process, and treat them in a more nuanced way.

Teams at MBZUAI are working on numerous research projects and initiatives aimed at delivering precision healthcare and treatments across a broad range of illnesses and conditions, from Attention Deficit Hyperactive Disorder (ADHD) in children, to the early detection of heart disease and foetal abnormalities, allowing for earlier, more bespoke interventions.

TREATING CHILDREN WITH ADHD

Our work on ADHD, in partnership with Infinite Brain Technologies (IBT), is aimed at helping diagnose and treat children with the condition, which affects some 129 million children and adolescents worldwide between the ages of five to 19 years, according to Children and Adults with Attention- Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (CHADD).

Our research focuses on using AI for causal discovery and causal representation to enhance our understanding of the underlying hidden factors behind ADHD and to measure this along with causal influences. This project uses specially designed electronic games which stimulate certain parts of the brain as a treatment, and AI is proving invaluable in tailoring the treatment for children’s individual needs. AI also enables us to analyse the impact of the treatment more accurately.

EXPLORING GUT HEALTH

MBZUAI is also working with partner organisations to expand the use of AI to analyse biobanks to learn more about aspects of human physiology including gut health, which is extremely complex and affects many areas of people’s wellbeing.

With the human gut being home to millions of types of bacteria, AI is already proving key in analysing the impact of various types of bacteria and their potential role in conditions including obesity and diabetes.

AI will increasingly improve our understanding of the underlying causes of many diseases to such a degree that in many cases, healthcare professionals will be able to make much earlier interventions to help prevent serious health conditions arising in the first place, for example by being able to use known biomarkers to predict if a person is predisposed to type-2 diabetes, enabling them to modify their lifestyle.

AI in healthcare will help to deliver a new level of personalization, giving healthcare professionals tools that provide greater insights into dependence patterns and the underlying causal processes and enhanced treatments, and giving individuals a far greater degree of control over their health.

Special thanks to Professor Kun Zhang for his guest contribution.

Interested to know more?

To learn how healthcare is being redefined in the GCC and MENA region, read the full magazine here

Published in PrecisionMed International magazine