End of The Semester Reflection of IND 250 (IP5)

The Evolution of Technology

Wow how time flies! Yet again, another semester almost to a close! This semester was an interesting one in taking this IND 250 Course. Not going to lie, this is not a course I would have taken of my own free will and took it as a requirement of my school in order to graduate. But am I sure glad that I did! 

We are living in a world of technology and it is everywhere around us! Just about everyone has a mini computer in their pocket. The advances of technology in the medical and biological fields is astounding! One of the most fascinating things I learned about this course was what an impact technology has made in these fields. We now have artificial intelligence (AI) such as Watson helping in the diagnosis of cancer and AI-based mobile apps like Babylon to help individuals in what course of action to take in treating their signs and symptoms after taking into account their medical history! This app can also constantly monitor an individuals information and if it steers away from baseline, can alert the individual, and predict a potential illness before it even occurs! Technology is able to do this because of machine learning. 

Machine learning was another topic learned in this course that was very interesting. Ever wonder why after you've done some online shopping you all of the sudden see advertisements a couple days later on other websites? Or see items similar to what you were shopping for? Even on netflix, it predicts movies you may be interested in watching based on the movies you have already watched! It is insane to know that a nonliving entity can do this! Even with the mobile app Babylon being able to tell when an individuals baseline vitals are out of the ordinary and can predict an illness before it even occurs. It blows my mind how far technology has come to be able to do this!

Another thing I learned during the duration of this course is how much programming and code that has to be written in order for us to be able to see anything on a computer. It is something without knowing about it, we all take for granted. On top of that, how fast information can be transmitted from one end of the world to the other! It is all due to advances in technology, computer programmers, and lots and lots of time. It is something I honestly never took the time to consider and admire at that. And after taking this course, it is something I am now definitely more aware and in awe about. It just goes to show how far we technology has come along and how dependent we have grown to it. Technology in many fields is making extraordinary strides and I feel as though this is very beneficial for efficiency, but can be a disadvantage too. I feel as though it is only a matter of time until technology goes from being a resource to being a crutch. It might be only a matter of time until the world is ran by computers! Select this link to watch how machines are already taking over human's work efficiently in "Humans Need Not Apply."

After taking this course I have learned many valuable lessons that can help me be better prepared for a professional career in the digital age. Now knowing how to make professional calendar invites, perform interviews, create surveys to gather data, learned about JoVE to obtain information and watch video's of scientific experiments performed pertaining to my field, and now being more aware of the technology that is out there and advancing in my field. Prior to taking this course I did not know about or how to go about any of these topics and now I do. As I previously said, I did not take this course our of my own freewill, but am definitely glad that I was required to and did. Technology is a continuously evolving and is now becoming a major aspect to everyone's workplace, education, and daily lives.

Sources:

Machines Taking Over Human's Work Efficiently. (n.d.). Retrieved April 08, 2016, from http://www.funarm.com/2014/08/machines-taking-over-humans-work.html

Video Link

Technology taking over humans - Google Search. (n.d.). Retrieved April 08, 2016, from https://www.google.com/search?q=technology taking over humans

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Google Analytics, CSS, and HTML (IL5)

Google Analytics, CSS, and HTML

Google Analytics is a system in which one can gather information about who has been viewing their webpage. There are four main components of the Analytics system: data collection, configuration, data processing, and reporting. First, Google Analytics is able to collect user interaction data from websites, mobile apps, and other digitally connected sources. For the sake of this blog, we are just going to ellaborate off of websites. Google Analytics uses JavaScript code to collect information when a user views a page. This is known as a "hit". Once a "hit" has occurred, Google Analytics, the users collected data begins to be processed. This info is known as "raw data" and is processed into something that can be useful.After the users data has been processed, it is then configured, in which the data is can be filtered and stored into a database. Once stored in the database, the data cannot be changed. And finally, after the users data has been collected, processed, and configured, it is then reported. This data is then reported to the Google Analytics web interface in which the website designer can access the data related to the user who viewed the website.

CSS which stands for Cascading Style Sheets is the language used in computer programming that describes the appearance and formatting of your HTML. A style sheet is a file that describes how an HTML file should look and are said to be cascading because the sheets can apply formatting when more than one style applies. An example of CSS is shown below.

Doctor in Your Pocket (IP4)

Doctor in Your Pocket

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is making a major breakthrough in the healthcare industry of today. In the article "The Artificially Intelligent Doctor Will Hear You Now" by Simon Parkin in the MIT Technology Review, he talks about an AI-based app that is being tested in the U.K. known as Babylon. 

I discussed in an earlier post about an Artificial Intelligence here in the U.S. known as Watson. AI is having a major impact on the healthcare industry. There were many benefits and disadvantages to this type of technology. One of the major benefits I saw from it, was that a computer can recall information a lot faster than a doctor can and could be a beneficial resources. Watson draws its' information from 600,000 medical evidence reports, 1.5 million patient records and clinical trials, and 2 million pages of text from medical journals related to cancer to provide information to doctors. That's a lot of info to expect anyone to know! Doctor's can't possible retain that much information, hence, advantages of AI in the healthcare industry. Disadvantages were the potential lack of doctor-client relationships, doctors using AI as a crutch, ethical dilemmas, and the possibility of particular job positions being lost and replaced by AI. Simon writes "There are about 10,000 known human diseases, yet human doctors are only able to recall a fraction of them at any given moment. As many as 40,500 patients die annually in an ICU in the U.S. as a result os misdiagnosis, according to a 2012 Johns Hopkins study." I do believe in instances like this, AI would be very beneficial and as a resource, but only by those means.

Parsa, the founder and CEO of Babylon created an AI-based app that was designed to improve doctors' hit rate so that misdiagnosis and deaths as indicated above do not happen. Babylon is a very interesting piece of technology that is used on your phone! It is just an app you can download! Users of the app can report symptoms of their illness into the app and then the app will check their signs and symptoms against a database of diseases. The app will then take into account the patient's medical history, genetics, environment, behavior, biology and circumstances and then offer an appropriate course of action! Similar to Watson, Babylon uses a network of databases but not just for cancer. Babylon can analyze "hundreds of millions of combinations of symptoms" in a matter of minutes! Once combining all this info together related to the patients history and given signs and symptoms, the app can recommend what course of action the patient should take. Whether it be go the the pharmacy and get this OTC drug, book an appointment with the doctor, or go to the emergency room! On top of this app telling you what you should do due to your circumstances, it also is able to "constantly monitor information on the kidneys, liver, bones, cholesterol levels, and more, along with data collected from wearable devices that monitor sleep patterns and heart rate." It's like a fitbit on steroids! Because of machine learning, if it notices any changes from your baseline it will then alert you, predicting a potential illness before it occurs! 

Doctors are able to view the app's findings and information via a medical portal. Because of this, a doctor can consult with a patient via text, phone call, or video chat. In essence, this is pretty cool because the patient could have faster access to a doctor vs scheduling an appointment, waiting, etc. Although this app is pretty phenomenal and can do everything and anything under the sun that a doctor can, it is regulated to not make formal diagnoses. Parsa is hoping to regulation lifted soon because he thinks, "Machines are able to recall every known disease perfectly when examining symptoms. And unlike human don't have confirmation bias." In contrast, Clare Aitchison says, "While it's true that computer recall is always going to be better than that of even the best doctor, what computers can't do is communicate with people." 

It's insane how far technology has developed because of computer programming and machine learning. AI systems such as Watson and Babylon are making a huge breakthrough in the healthcare field which can be very beneficial and detrimental. I believe that AI in the healthcare industry can be very beneficial as indicated above and in my earlier post. When time is of the essence, turn to it for assistance. But when time is not of the essence, doctors should use it as a resource and not a crutch. Parsa makes a good point in saying machines are able to recall every known disease perfectly without examining the symptoms and don't have human bias. And Aitchison makes a good point in saying computers can't communicate with people. I don't think the app's regulation on making formal diagnoses should be lifted, that's the doctors job. I think the app is a good resource as to getting information and talking to a doctor when needed, but do not believe it should be the only source to treat an individual. Computers cannot communicate with humans. An individual can lie about their symptoms to trick the computer into giving them a particular diagnosis in order to get certain drugs. There has to be some regulation to it. That's why although AI is good in helping doctors with diagnoses, pulling information together based on the patients signs, symptoms, and history, and good with presenting a possible course of treatment, I believe it is the doctor's role to have the final say in the diagnosis, treatment, and plan of care. Doctor's should only use AI as a resource and not a crutch.

Links for More Information Regarding Artificial Intelligence:

The Artificially Intelligent Doctor Will Hear You Now by Simon Parkin

Babylon Raises About $25m in Series A Round to Create The World's Most Advance AI Platform for Medicine

Images Obtained From:

http://tropicalpost.com/2016/01/14/babylon-raises-about-25m-in-series-a-round-to-create-the-worlds-most-advanced-ai-platform-for-medicine/

https://www.technologyreview.com/s/600868/the-artificially-intelligent-doctor-will-hear-you-now/

Website Development Contributing to Field of Biology (IP3)

Everything is ran by electronics these days. There's an app for this, an app for that, and can turn up the thermostat in your house from the office by a couple of touches on your smartphone! If someone doesn't know how to do something, the first thing they do is look it up on the internet. If someone doesn't know information about something, they look it up on the internet. Goes to show how far along in technology we have come and how because of technology we are able to grow at a exponential rate in particular fields. 

David Fraser Ph.D. in neuroscience, is a biology instructor at Chatham University and strongly agrees that technology has contributed to the field of biology in many ways. The development of websites allows you to access information from all over the world. Websites such as Science Direct allows you to obtain information on studies performed from years ago, to studies that were performed a week ago! Allows you to narrow and access research performed on particular hypothesis, pertaining to certain drugs, under particular conditions, and so forth. When developing an hypothesis, you can search particular aspects of it to verify it, disprove it, or see if someone else has already thought of it. Other websites such as JoVE (The Journal of Visualized Experiments) which is a peer-reviewed scientific journal that publishes experimental methods in video format. With knowing basic scientific methods, procedures, and applications, one can further develop their skills and perform particular tasks without having to learn how to do so in the classroom! You can watch are particular studies have been performed and see the results before your very eyes!

Anything can be found through some website. Some websites are more credible than others, but the credible ones are out there. Websites have made a huge contribution to biology from sharing information, providing information, and showing how things can be done. Because of the development of the internet and websites, we literally have the world at our fingertips.

http://www.jove.com/biology

IL1

You have been redirected here by top secret means I can not speak about.....

Artificial Intelligence in the Healthcare Industry (IP2)

I created a survey for IP2 on artificial intelligence in the healthcare industry, below is the link to access the survey. I was surprised how easy it was to create the survey and the different options you had to format the questions. I tried to incorporate several types of questions such as multiple choice, select all that apply, short answer, etc. This was a fun experiment in which it was a lot easier to create than I had expected. I have never needed to conduct a survey (thus far in life, lol) but see how it can be very beneficial for a variety of people in different industries. I was not 100% sure if my questions were appropriate for the project or how to "graph" the results based on the questions. How do you graph a short answer? But would be able to analyze the results and either create a new survey with more precise questions related to the answers and so forth. I posted some questions on the class lounge and got some great feedback from Dr. Chung and Timothy James. Some improvements I would make for future reference is the title. I kind of went lightly on it. I have a couple classes in which I have to create blogs on a weekly basis and it was "easier" for me to title it IP2 to keep my blogs straight. Also, I would have to incorporate some type of background summary of the topic of the survey. How am I suppose to know how much the surveyor knows about artificial intelligence? If they don't know anything then their answers would skew the data I'm analyzing. I got some great feedback from Dr. Chung and Timothy James about how to go about resolving this issue with the "help text" feature. I used it once in my survey on question number 4 where I wrote "Select All that Apply". I did not realize that we could write an extended amount of info here. Also, I should put a question earlier in the survey asking about the surveyors knowledge of artificial intelligence in the healthcare industry. Something like "How knowledgeable or familiar are you of the usage of artificial intelligence in the healthcare industry?" I thought I kind f did this in question #4, but I should have made it more concise.

So how I performed this survey was by first creating it and copying and pasting the link on facebook asking people to take my survey so I can get data for my class assignment. Keep in mind, I have not posted ANYTHING on facebook for a number of years now and had to assure people that I was still alive and talk to them to show my appreciation for taking the survey. I don't do facebook because I think it is a waste of time. Sorry if I offended anyone in saying that, nothing against you, its a personal choice lol! Anyways, it was a good way to get many people to take the survey without have to email a bunch of people and in getting a wide array of people from different backgrounds to answer the survey. As stated above, to give better background on the survey's topic, I now know I could have used the "help text" feature but I could have also done a quick summary of it on here in a blog and attached the survey link here as I have done for the submission of this assignment. Then I could have just posted my blog address on facebook and asked people to go to it, read the background info, then select the survey link. So there were a couple different ways I now know I could have gone about to better write and create the survey AND get the needed info out to the surveyors. Also, I think my results can be somewhat skewed because majority of them were female in the healthcare industry. Future surveys will have to be more diverse and conducted with clearly more than 12 participants. But for the sake of the assignment and having fun :) here's what I got!

Results:
Out of the 12 (fully completed) responses, 10 of them were women in the healthcare industry between the ages of 26-35. The other 2 were males, one between the ages of 19-25 and the other 46-55. The younger male was in the sciences and older male in the another field not indicated. 8 of the 10 females thought AI systems had more benefits than faults in the healthcare industry, but could see its disadvantages, while all believing that everyone in the healthcare industry would be affected. The other 2 females thought it would be more detrimental than beneficial and also believed everyone would be affected. The younger of the two males had no idea how AI was affecting the healthcare industry and thought robots were taking over the world (I think this was my little brother, lol). The older of the two males thought AI systems had more benefits than faults, but could see its disadvantages. 2 participants were indifferent about a how comfortable they were with a AI system diagnosing them while the other 9 were not comfortable with it at all. Everyone's short answers varied on the benefits and disadvantages of AI systems in the healthcare industry. This area is more subjective and I would have to create another survey somewhat specified towards the general ideas of these results to get more accurate results.

Survey link:
http://goo.gl/forms/c7IlBH7S0T

Here's some graphs, like I said, it would have been difficult to graph the short answer responses without having more specific questions so thats why i summarized them in my blogs. I know you emailed me saying I did not have to do them if I didn't have the time, but for the sake of the assignment here's a couple. The other questions and results I would have had to take more time on excel but thought I'd still turn something in :) thanks!