The answer to identifying certain diseases may be hiding in our eyes!
Researchers at Google and its health subsidiary announced Monday that they have successfully created algorithms to predict whether someone has high blood pressure or is at risk of a heart attack or stroke, simply by scanning a person's eyes.
Google researchers trained the algorithm with images of retinal scans from more than 280,000 patients. By reviewing this massive database, Google's algorithm was trained to recognize patterns that marked individuals as high risk.
The success of this algorithm is a sign of exciting developments for the future of healthcare. As Google improves the technology, it could one day help patients quickly and affordably identify any health problems.
But we shouldn't get too excited just yet. The algorithm didn't outperform existing medical approaches, such as blood tests, according to the Washington Post report. The algorithms were able to identify patients at risk 70 percent of the time. That's certainly impressive, but it's not perfect.
The process also hasn't been replicated or validated to the point where it can be widely accepted in the scientific community. And experts don't believe Google's technology is likely to replace conventional, human medicine in the near future.
Maulik Majmudar, associate director of the Health Transformation Lab at Massachusetts General Hospital, told the Post that age and gender are good predictors of risk for such a disease. And while Google’s algorithm is an improvement, that improvement over current healthcare practices would be marginal at best.
That said, it is clear that artificial intelligence and machine learning have the potential to bring additional convenience and affordability to the healthcare industry.
