When is a "pandemic" over?

Dear friends and colleagues,

It's Friday morning. I'm taking some time to do a little thinking. Fuelled by a double strength cappuccino and bite size snack called a "power ball", here we go...

Two things in this newsletter: firstly my thoughts about when to "call it" (end the pandemic) and secondly, I want to introduce you to another newsletter that I've started on AI and Health.

When will we officially be able to say that this pandemic is over? I have an answer to that question, but the answer requires a little context.

COVID-19 this winter and into 2023 - what do expect....

The short answer is yes; we will have a substantial surge of COVID-19 this winter (if you're living in the northern hemisphere) but for the most part, severe disease will be mitigated by having a highly vaccinated population. Hurrah! There will however be a substantial surge which means that with even a small percentage of the population being vulnerable to severe disease, the timeframe within which that increase pressure on healthcare systems, will be short and difficult. We'll also have influenza, RSV and other respiratory viruses spreading in a way that we haven't seen since 2019.

So what will this mean for Joe-public? Lockdown? Almost certainly not. Mask, physical distancing and other non-pharmaceutical interventions? Yes, I expect that most countries will introduce measures to flatten out the epidemiological curve and lesson the pressure on acute hospitals. Vaccination campaigns (influenza and COVID-19) to protect vulnerable populations? Of course - bring it on.

But is this forever? Will ever winter bring a renewed panic to protect the acute hospitals. When will the pandemic really be over? The answer is no. I expect that by this time next year we'll have a new crop of vaccinations (including polyvalent vaccines that protect against any variant, and intranasal vaccines that protect against even mild infections). We'll still have circulating COVID-19 (forever I'm sure) but the substantial winter surge with the associated sudden pressure on the healthcare system will soften.

So when do we call it? Here you go: a pandemic is over when the disease no longer effects how we live, work and play. It's over when we feel safe enough to resume normal life. We decide.

Soon I hope. Not now. But soon.

Next: AI and Health - a new newsletter.

Here is a sample of a weekly newsletter about AI and Health. If you like it and want to get it regularly - click here to subscribe

Welcome to our weekly AI & Health newsletter where we share the latest on how AI is being used to transform healthcare globally.?

AI helps early diagnosis of Parkinson’s Disease?

In great news this week, MIT has developed an AI model that assesses whether someone has Parkinson’s disease based on breathing patterns during sleep. The tool can also measure the severity of a patient’s Parkinson's disease and track its progression over time.?

Parkinson's disease is extremely difficult to diagnose because its symptoms, including tremors, stiffness, and slowness, manifest years after the onset of the disease. Unfortunately, Parkinson's is also one of the fastest-growing neurological diseases in the world and the second-most common neurological disorder, after Alzheimer's disease.

MIT’s AI-powered tool therefore has huge implications for diagnosis, drug development and clinical care for Parkinson’s.?

The algorithm was tested on 7,687 individuals, including 757 Parkinson's patients.

There has also been great progress in applying AI to help diagnose other serious illnesses including Sepsis, stress and depression, and subdural hemorrhage, as we highlight below.

What we are excited about this week

News and developments

• CoeFont Co, a Tokyo venture,?recreates voices via AI?for cancer patients who lose theirs due to cancer surgery.?JAPAN TODAY
• Anomaly’s new product, ‘Smart Response’, uses AI to reduce unnecessary healthcare costs and to streamline healthcare billing by?identifying and preventing inaccurate payments?before they happen.?Vatornews
• As flagged above, Illinois-based?Blessing Health System?has integrated?POC Advisor, an artificial AI-based sepsis surveillance tool, into its clinical workflows to quickly?identify patients with sepsis?or septic shock.?HEALTHITANALYTICS
• The government of Gwanak district in Seoul,?South Korea?has deployed AI-powered?robots to assist adults living alone and disabled citizens.?Healthcare IT News
• In a world-first, doctors at?Amsterdam UMC's Intensive Care Unit are now using AI to decide?when a patient can be transferred from the Intensive Care Unit (ICU)?to a regular ward - a complicated decision intensivists face every day.?NL TIMES

Partnerships and collaborations

• Ellipsis AI?and?Ceras Health?are collaborating on?AI-powered voice analysis?to determine the severity of an individual’s?stress, anxiety and depression.?Fierce Biotech
• HORIBA, a medical diagnostic company, and?SigTuple,?a MedTech company, on Monday, announced a partnership to accelerate the?adoption of AI-assisted digital pathology?in India.?FE Healthcare
• PathAI, a global leader in?AI-powered pathology, announced a multi-year expanded collaboration agreement with?Bristol Myers Squibb?to focus on key translational research in oncology, fibrosis, and immunology.?Businesswire

New studies

• University of Florida?researchers plan to use a $3.7 million research grant to build an AI algorithm for the?prediction of new coronavirus variants?of concern.?University of Florida Health
• A paper by researchers at?MIT?and several other institutions describes an AI tool that can analyze?changes in nighttime breathing?to detect and track the?progression of Parkinson's?- a disease which causes tremors and other serious issues with movement.?MIT News
• Chenyang Lu, the Fullgraf Professor of computer science and engineering in St. Louis McKelvey School of Engineering,?Washington University?is combining?AI with data?to?improve patient care?and outcomes, as well as help?monitor doctors’ health?and well-being.?Newswise
• An AI-powered pilot study by?OptimizeRX?found that machine learning was able to accurately predict healthcare providers with?at-risk patients due to loss of insurance?coverage, including Medicare coverage gaps.?HealthcareITNews

Venture Funding

• Medical AI startup?AIRS Medical?from South Korea has raised $20 million in a Series B funding round. Its flagship product, SwiftMR, is an?AI-powered MRI reconstruction?software that enhances MR images.?Mobihealthnews
• Ubie, Inc., a healthcare AI startup with the mission “To develop a healthcare guide for everyone,” has raised $26.2 million in the 1st round of Series C funding. It operates a?medical data platform?that has?direct contact with both patients and medical institutions.?AITHORITY
• Digital Diagnostics?has closed a $75 million Series B funding round led by global investment firm KKR. The company's flagship product, IDx-DR, is an autonomous?AI diagnostic system?designed to?detect diabetic retinopathy(including diabetic macular edema) at the point-of-care, and is the first FDA De Novo cleared autonomous AI in healthcare.?CISION PR Newswire
• Biotia, a company using genomics and AI to fight?infectious diseases, has raised an oversubscribed $8 million Series A round led by OCA Ventures.?HIT CONSULTANT

Regulatory approval

• Viz.ai?has received FDA clearance for its Viz Subdural (Viz SDH)?algorithm, which the company trained to automatically?detect signs of subdural hemorrhage.?The AI model has a sensitivity of 94% and specificity of 92%.?Cardiovascular Business
• South Korea's Ministry of Health and Welfare and Ministry of Food and Drug Safety plan to streamline rules on medical AI, digital technology devices to?slash?their?period of evaluation and licensing?to around three months from over a year currently.?Healthcare IT News

Opinions, Dilemmas, and Crystal Ball Gazing

• Rare disease patients: Increasingly, HCPs and clinical research organizations weave together patient and treatment data while leveraging?AI analytics, to?safely place patients in clinical trials, as well as speed up the development and approval of new medicines.?HIT CONSULTANT
• One way to?reduce the time and cost, and ensure success of the clinical development process is to introduce?AI into clinical trials?and implement AI-driven?process automation.?(Tim Riely, VP Clinical Data Analytics at IQVIA)?HIT CONSULTANT

Thanks for reading. If you enjoyed this or found it useful, please forward it to a friend.

See you for next week’s for the next edition - have a fabulous week,

Keith, Greg, and Richard.