⚕️ New Antibiotic Discovery After Decades With AI

Good Morning! The frigid temperatures that we’ve been experiencing over the long weekend are expected to rise today before falling again for the rest of the week. Despite the cold, the HealthTech world continues to make waves.
Here’s a sneak peak into what we’re covering today:

• AI Powered Antibiotic Discovery

• 3 Tech Innovations Transforming Geriatric Monitoring

• Deep Dive: Clinical Data Warehousing

ANALYSIS
AI Sparks Discovery Of A New Antibiotic After Decades

• 569,000 deaths were linked to bacterial antimicrobial resistance (AMR) in all 35 countries of the WHO Region of the Americas

• MRSA was the deadliest pathogen-drug combination globally with 121,000 deaths attributable to antimicrobial resistance

What is happening: A new class of antibiotics for drug-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) bacteria was discovered, leading to a new breakthrough in almost six decades. The breakthrough leveraged a more transparent deep learning model to predict the activity and toxicity of a novel compound. 

How it works: To create the training data, approximately 39,000 compounds were evaluated for their antibiotic activity against MRSA.

Researchers used three additional deep-learning models to evaluate compound toxicity on various human cells, integrating these predictions with antimicrobial activity to screen 12 million compounds. They identified five classes effective against MRSA and tested approximately 280 compounds, revealing two promising antibiotics from the same class.

AI is increasingly being applied in drug discovery to accelerate the identification of potential drug candidates, predict their properties, and optimize the drug development process. The research not only introduces a potential solution to antibiotic resistance but also emphasizes the efficiency and insightfulness of AI in drug discovery.

Read more about the discovery here.

TOP STORY
3 Tech Innovations Transforming Geriatric Monitoring

With over 95 percent of the older population affected with at least one chronic condition, there’s a need for better healthcare solutions for the geriatric population. 

Remote monitoring is one such solution that tracks data such as vitals, lifestyle changes, diet, and more in real-time. Fluctuations in these data are reported to the physicians, who then send medical help in adverse scenarios. 

Remote monitoring solutions are available in varied formats and they help with diverse elderly care. Top 3 solutions to look out for are:

1. Integration of wearables in remote monitoring

2. Chronic disease monitoring solutions

3. AI-driven remote monitoring solution

Read about how technology is enabling better patient monitoring for elderly population here.

DEEP DIVE
What Is Clinical Data Warehousing

Clinical data warehousing involves the centralized storage and management of clinical data from various sources within the healthcare organization.

It serves as a comprehensive repository consolidating patient information, treatment records, and other relevant data, facilitating efficient analysis and decision-making in healthcare settings.

Here are the key aspects of data warehousing

• Centralized storage

• Integration of data sources

• Data quality and consistency

• Security and compliance

• Scalability

Read about how data warehousing differs from data lake architecture here.

SNIPPETS
What else is making news

• Rad AI, an AI start-up for radiology reporting, announced a partnership with Google to use its cloud and AI innovations to help save radiologists' time, reduce burnout, and to ultimately improve the quality of patient care. Rad AI will be using Google Cloud's platform and AI tools including Gemini-based models in the future. In addition, Google Cloud will become Rad AI's preferred cloud provider.

• Apple is removing a blood-oxygen sensor from some of its watches to get around a patent dispute related to the technology, dealing a potential blow to its healthcare ambitions.

• The Mayo Clinic will beworking with TruLite, developer of a health equity software, to address issues of clinical bias within the Mayo Clinic system. TruLite's standalone software integrates itself directly into an EHR and creates patient-specific interventions at the clinical, behavioral, and social levels. By implementing this software into its daily practice, Mayo Clinic is hoping to target inequitable health outcomes, specifically for patients of color.

• UC San Diego Health to use AI for predictive kidney stone detection with Limmi’s disease insights platform.