Anna Soisalo, executive director strategy and product from Ustwo Europe, speaks to Health Tech World about the future of digital health, data responsibility, and personalised medicine…
Technology is often described as a panacea in healthcare. Whether providing faster cancer diagnosis and more effective treatments or helping to keep elderly relatives out of care homes thanks to improved digital monitoring, technology will have an increasingly important role to play in our health and in our lives.
Just recently, there was a discussion around the role AI can play in tackling the global diet crisis, with new technology which aims to match people to the right foods for their individual needs. A personalised, digital nutrition service could have a significant role in helping to cut obesity levels across the globe.
Indeed, in the face of seismic changes in attitudes to digital healthcare, some of which were accelerated during the pandemic, there has been a shift towards greater personalisation and prevention of health problems – both mental and physical.
For instance, many have been directed online to speak to doctors and healthcare professionals, in some cases as a
direct result of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Increasing trust in digital health
Even as we have emerged to a new ‘normality’, people have continued to mix in person with online consultations and many are now using technology to track long term conditions such as diabetes and cardio-vascular problems.
Increasing numbers also use tech and digital products to measure their exercise levels, their heart rate, their sleep cycle and temperature, with apps allowing them to predict when they might be coming down with a cold or a virus.
In this way, both technological advances and the pandemic have increased trust in new ways of monitoring and regulating our health.
At the same time, scientists and researchers are sharing ever increasing amounts of data across borders to help with new breakthroughs in diagnosis and treatments.
This has provided fresh challenges within the sphere of data protection, but new methods are being found to protect privacy and facilitate sharing.
Personalised medicine & digital health
Where technology could make a truly revolutionary contribution to healthcare is in the area of personalised medicine. Yes, current work around improving adherence to, and therefore efficacy of, medication will definitely improve outcomes for patients, but being able to deliver an individual medicine for each and every one of us is the dream.
There seems no doubt that research and technology will eventually take us there and news of a personalised nutrition service to beat obesity, points in that direction.
In the meantime, we need to make sure that the data we are using for our research is ethically driven and as free from bias as possible.
Data based on a white male population, for instance, will not provide answers for everyone – the famous case being seat belt safety tests for cars, which means that many seatbelts are not designed to protect women to the same degree as men.
Greater data, greater responsibility
As we collect more and more data, and better use it to understand how to treat diseases and improve decision making, we also have a greater responsibility to ensure the data we collect, the processes we design, and the algorithms we build, are
unbiased.
The data we use needs to reflect the diversity in society, in order to provide personalised medicine for all. We also need to ensure that those working with the technology and the data are themselves diverse, to ensure that what we conceive of, design and build is as representative of wider society as possible.
AI bias & diversity
Indeed, even pre pandemic, a study found a disastrous lack of diversity in the AI industry, further perpetuating bias.
Teams must be built with this in mind.
Looking forward, there are some fantastic opportunities for technology and data to be harnessed to keep us healthier for longer – changing the way we prevent and treat disease.
To this end, the sharing of data is key in order to build a sufficiently aggregate view.
And while personalised medicine may be today’s dream, the only certainty is that science and technology will continue to change healthcare across the world, perhaps in ways we have not yet imagined.
We need to embrace change because, in the words of Charles Darwin: “It’s not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change.”
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