Lifeboat Foundation

Trust in AI. If you’re a clinician or a physician, would you trust this AI?

Clearly, sepsis treatment deserves to be focused on, which is what Epic did. But in doing so, they raised several thorny questions. Should the model be recalibrated for each discrete implementation? Are its workings transparent? Should such algorithms publish confidence along with its prediction? Are humans sufficiently in the loop to ensure that the algorithm outputs are being interpreted and implem… See more.

Earlier this year, I wrote about fatal flaws in algorithms that were developed to mitigate the COVID-19 pandemic. Researchers found two general types of flaws. The first is that model makers used small data sets that didn’t represent the universe of patients which the models were intended to represent leading to sample selection bias. The second is that modelers failed to disclose data sources, data-modeling techniques and the potential for bias in either the input data or the algorithms used to train their models leading to design related bias. As a result of these fatal flaws, such algorithms were inarguably less effective than their developers had promised.

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Child-size vaccine doses are already being distributed in US and shots may begin as early as Wednesday.

Reuters.

New 3D printer aims to make bioprinting more accessible with uses that range from personalised drugs to human spare parts.

A new adhesive that mimics the sticky substance barnacles use to cling to rocks may offer a better way to treat traumatic injuries.

One doctor calls the test “a game changer.”

Rare diseases aren’t so rare. Collectively, up to 30 million Americans, many of them children, are born with one of the approximately 7,000 known rare diseases. Most of these millions of people also share a common genetic feature: their diseases are caused by an alteration in a single gene.

Many of these alterations could theoretically be targeted with therapies designed to correct or replace the faulty gene. But there have been significant obstacles in realizing this dream. The science of gene therapy has been making real progress, but pursuing promising approaches all the way to clinical trials and gaining approval from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is still very difficult. Another challenge is economic: for the rarest of these conditions (which is most of them), the market is so small that most companies have no financial incentive to pursue them.

To overcome these obstacles and provide hope for those with rare diseases, we need a new way of doing things. One way to do things differently—and more efficiently—is the recently launched Bespoke Gene Therapy Consortium (BGTC). It is a bold partnership of NIH, the FDA, 10 pharmaceutical companies, and several non-profit organizations [1]. Its aim: optimize the gene therapy development process and help fill the significant unmet medical needs of people with rare diseases.

LISBON, Nov 2 (Reuters) — Chip designer Advanced Micro Devices (AMD.O) has been able to skirt most of the problems linked with the global chip supply shortage by forecasting demand years in advance, a top executive said on Tuesday.

Demand for electronics gadgets from people stuck in homes due to the pandemic has led to a shortage of semiconductors that are used from anything from mobile phones and cars.

But despite a squeeze in supply, AMD has been able to take market share away from rival Intel (INTC.O) in both PCs and servers with its latest line of processors.

Fighting The Battle Against Biological Aging — Dr. Eric Verdin MD, President & CEO, Buck Institute for Research on Aging.

Dr. Eric Verdin, MD (https://www.buckinstitute.org/lab/verdin-lab/) is President and Chief Executive Officer of the Buck Institute for Research on Aging, as well as Professor of Medicine at University of California, San Francisco (https://bms.ucsf.edu/people/eric-verdin-md).

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Ebola Vaccine: Information about Ervebo® | Clinicians | Ebola (Ebola Virus Disease) | CDC.

A safe and effective vaccine is an important tool to protect frontline workers and prevent the introduction and spread of Ebola in the United States.

Ebola virus is a zoonotic pathogen that causes severe hemorrhagic fever in humans, known as Ebola virus disease (EVD). There are four species of Ebola virus that have been known to cause disease in humans. Of these, species Zaire ebolavirus (EBOV) is the most lethal, with case fatality rates of 70–90% if left untreated. EBOV is responsible for the majority of recorded EVD outbreaks. This includes the two largest EVD outbreaks in history, the 2014–2016 West Africa outbreak and the 2018 outbreak in eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo, where over 32,000 people were infected, and more than 13,600 deaths were reported.

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