Here's some things I'm looking forward to in 2024

Before we get swept away by climate events, wars, AI failures and other horrors, may I at least share some things that I think are going to be positive in 2024:

1. WEHI (Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research) has worked with The Royal Melbourne Hospital to show that an at-home Diabetes 1 screening kit works. Diabetes is a silent killer for many - it is more prevalent than people might realise. If detected in time then it helps minimise great damage to the body.

https://www.thermh.org.au/news/world-first-at-home-test-for-diabetes-proven-to-work

2. Malaria - yes - that thorny beast, is finally succumbing to vaccines. Woo hoo!

Malaria has been a very difficult parasite that uses stealth biotechnology to evade the immune system. But our collective human ingenuity finally has made two vaccines that work. The disease kills millions, but of more long-term impact, it prevents kids going to school because of sick parents. So having a vaccine or two is a game changer. More here

3. Vaccines against at least some cancers

I'm excited about the potential of mRNA vaccines against cancers. But there may be other approaches as well: Protein vaccines such as Novovax for COVID have now come to market and I think the protein-based approaches have got a bright future. I can't wait for cancer-preventive ones to enter wider trials. See more here.

4. We can avoid or minimise chemotherapy for at least some cancers (such as colon cancer)

An approach trialled at WEHI (Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research) can use liquid biopsies to reduce or remove the need for chemotherapy in 50% of patients after surgery. If the specific cancer DNA is not found in the biopsy after surgery then no need for the patient to endure chemotherapy. While not a cure approach, it is a game changer for patient well being: https://www.wehi.edu.au/news/collaborating-across-the-lab-and-the-clinic-for-better-cancer-outcomes/

5. Personalised medicine

There are many trials underway that use combinations of immunotherapy and some chemotherapy against cancer. Many of them involve testing for whether the person has a known genetic defect: this makes it possible to target the cancer type more specifically. Then there are #CAR-T approaches that take a person's own cancer DNA fragments and use the patient's own immune cells specifically against it. It's really exciting. https://www.cancer.gov/about-cancer/treatment/research/car-t-cells

6. Camelid immunoglobulins

WEHI continues to research the use of Alpaca nanoantibodies (Alpacas are part of the camelid family) which are TINY. Being so small they cross the blood-brain barrier. Which means potentially against aspects of Parkinson's and brain diseases more generally. Exciting. https://www.wehi.edu.au/research/technologies/antibody-technologies/

7. AI has potential for much harm - leading lights such as Enrico Coiera and Farah Magrabi have called out the need to stimulate spending on Ai in Healthcare research and appropriate governance for safety. I co-authored an early paper on this topic: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31682262/

The concerns about inequities, biases and misinformation are all too real. And yet - they can help enormously as well. Google's Alphafold technology has resulted in a database of 200million predicted structures of proteins being made publicly available - this is an incredible resource. https://alphafold.ebi.ac.uk/

8. I asked ChatGPT4 for its for its view on what is most likely to be the most beneficial use of AI in healthcare in the next year or two:

AI is expected to significantly improve health outcomes in the early detection and diagnosis of diseases, particularly through the analysis of medical imaging for cancers. Personalized treatment plans tailored by AI algorithms may lead to more effective care. Additionally, AI-driven advancements in drug discovery are poised to accelerate the development of new therapeutics.

I agree.

9. Moving away from health and medicine, in tertiary education in Australia we are now seeing more emphasis on outcomes for students being an equal measure to research rankings of the Unis. I think this is a good thing. The university where I currently teach and undertake research, Deakin University takes such a balanced approach - research and teaching are both equally important - and I can attest I am directly measured for student experience and their feedback on my course quality. What is measured matters. What matters must be measured.

10. More broadly, I think AI will be an aid and assist in all aspects of business and even our hobbies.

I have found the use of the more powerful AI tools has certainly increased my productivity through improved ability to investigate, research and even analyse data. Sure they must be treated with care, and most of us by now know about the direct mis-statements or inaccuracies made by current large language models. But the future in 2024 will be hugely shaped by more powerful, better trained models. I love photography and my photo library has just been dramatically supercharged last year by new AI tools for restoring old family photos, sharpening out of focus faces, recolourising etc.

I hope some of these updates give you some hope and positivity in a time when we know there are very real world difficulties - it is not my intention to airbrush these difficulties away. But I remain optimistic overall.

Feel free to share and to offer your positive views of what you see emerging in 2024 as well.

Cheers, Paul