Hi Healthcare Professional,
We recently engaged in a discussion with Daphne Koller, CEO and founder of insitro and keynote speaker for the AI & Data Science Track at the PMWC 2024. The event is being held January 24-26, 2024 in Silicon Valley (FULL 6-TRACK PROGRAM SCHEDULE), and will explore opportunities and advancements that are emerging through the intersection of AI and data science.
As Koller shared in our conversation, we are currently witnessing an exponential trajectory in how data science and AI/ML can be applied to accelerate development cycle timelines across industries and the broad impact it is making on society. A notable instance is the recent launch of ChatGPT, which occurred only 10 months ago but is already evolving and influencing operations across various disciplines and professional domains. In alignment with this trend, AI and data science are projected to revolutionize every facet of drug discovery, clinical care and basic research.
“We find ourselves in a world where AI/ML can accomplish even more – advancing at such an accelerated pace and surpassing what would not have been achievable merely a month ago.”
Within healthcare, precision oncology stands out as one area with the swiftest advancement and subsequent deployment of AI/ML applications, Koller explained. Consider the case of breast cancer diagnosis – while early stages of AI/ML integration allowed for the identification of breast lumps, defining distinct cancer subtypes and understanding how to uniquely address them demanded the utilization of advanced data tools. As AI/ML has been further integrated into drug development and cancer diagnosis, we’ve come to understand the importance of treating certain cancers based on unique features. For example, we now know that HER-2 positive breast cancer patients should be treated differently than patients with BRCA1-based breast cancer. The data feeding into these decisions are already more intricate than what visual inspection by a human can encompass – an algorithm effectively handles this task by analyzing genetic data and translating it into recommended treatment choices.
Moving ahead, Koller believes the next generation of cancer treatments will involve subtle patterns in circulating DNA and methylation patterns, as well as integrating ML-enabled insights from histopathology, both requiring analysis beyond what a clinician can readily execute. Instead, a trained algorithm will be responsible for conducting the analysis. This shift will lead AI to play a more central role in making cancer predictions (e.g., cancer origin, driver mutations) and subsequent treatment determinations. Looking beyond cancer, other therapeutic areas will also reap benefits from advances in AI and data science.
“One imperative to drive field progress involves the collection of abundant high-content patient data, secure placement within anonymized research environments, and controlled researcher access within an appropriate data security framework. This will enable the unraveling of human disease heterogeneity and identification of treatable patient groups. This is increasingly pivotal, given that many conditions currently classified as diseases are highly likely not singular entities. Alzheimer’s, for example, isn’t a single disease, neither is autism or any condition in the mental health spectrum.”
“While we have seen these tremendous advances, our healthcare system is not fully armed with the tools necessary to deliver on the promise of what this technology can do. There continues to be inadequate system-wide patient data collection, and when sufficient data is able to be amassed, it often remains locked in data silos accessible to a handful of principal investigators involved in research.”
Koller emphasized that this approach doesn’t offer a winning strategy for our industry as a whole – or, more importantly, for patients. “Initiatives that have transcended these barriers, like the UK Biobank or The Cancer Genome Atlas, have profoundly reshaped the medical discipline. We should strive for more initiatives of this kind in order to truly unlock the potential of AI/ML for the benefit of patients – an effort so many of us in this industry have committed our lives and careers to.”
We are thrilled to present an outstanding data science track for PMWC 2024 Silicon Valley, scheduled for January 24-26, see the agenda for where Daphne is giving a keynote (Track 2 – January 26th):
Track Chair: Gad Getz, Broad Institute
• PMWC 2024 Luminary Award
Luminary Honoree: Heidi Rehm, MGH and Broad Institute
• Opening Talk: The Power of Data by Track Chair Gaddy Getz, Broad Institute
• Global Data Sharing Collaboration: Overcoming Organizational and Sectoral Barriers (PANEL)
Chair: Gad Getz, Broad Institute
– Peter Goodhand, GA4GH
– Valentina Di Francesco, NHGRI
• Challenges of Remote Data Harmonization and Querying
Chair: Heidi Rhem, MGH and Broad Institute
– Andrea Ramirez, All of Us
– Ida Sim, UCSF
– Josh Peterson, Emerge/Vanderbilt University Medical Center
– Nara Sobreira, Johns Hopkins/GeneMatcher
• Keynote: Machine Learning for Therapeutic Discovery
– Daphne Koller, insitro
• Exploring the Power of AI and Data Sciences in Drug Discovery
Chair: Russ Altman, Stanford University
– Kim Branson, GSK
– Sun-Gou Ji, BridgeBio
– Angela Oliveira Pisco, Insitro
• Foundation Models to Advance Precision Medicine (PANEL)
Chair: Nigam Shah, Stanford
– Aashima Gupta, Google
– Matthew Lungren, Microsoft
– Rod Tarrago, AWS
We invite you to join key opinion leaders in the field, ensuring you don’t miss out on these crucial discussions that are poised to shape decision-making across all healthcare and medical facets. Precision medicine, with its focus on granular comprehension and targeted treatment at both the patient population and individual patient levels, stands on the brink of significant advances facilitated by these emerging, increasingly potent AI systems and capabilities.
Join us January 24-26 (Link by Thursday) to participate in this critical discourse and witness the profound transformation in progress.
Sincerely,
Tal Behar
President & Co-founder, PMWC
PMWC 2024 Silicon Valley – January 24-26, 2024
The Precision Medicine World Conference (PMWC)
Sent to [email protected] –
