AI can lead to preventive approach in medicine, says biology expert
Hyderabad: Eminent biologist Dr Leroy Hood, who is also the president and co-founder of the Institute of Systems Biology, said that AI and big data will provide insights into an individual’s health for early detection of diseases and enhance preventive measures in the healthcare sector.
Delivering the keynote lecture on ‘Transforming Healthcare from a Disease Orientation to a Wellness and Prevention focus’ as part of Dr D. Bhaskar Reddy Memorial Lecture organised by AIG Hospitals in the city on Monday, Dr Hood highlighted seven paradigm shifts that transformed the 21st-century healthcare system.
“The first paradigm shift was bringing engineering together with biology, followed by the human genome project. The third shift was the first cross-disciplinary biology department of molecular biology, while the fourth was systems biology, the fifth shift was the conceptualisation of P4 healthcare system — Predictive, Preventive, Personalised, Participatory — the sixth one was data-driven wellness and the final, seventh shift, was bringing the P4 healthcare system via phenome health and phenomics,” he said.
Dr Hood discussed the human genome project, a study of 1 million people over 10 years, which assessed the contribution of genome, behaviour and environment to an individual’s changing phenotype.
The biologist said that the phenomic data from analytes from various organs in the body could be integrated with Artificial Intelligence to give health outcomes and health trajectories of an individual.
Dr Hood also elaborated on the role of the data-driven vision of health, which could help map the health trajectory of a person at various stages: wellness, transition, disease progression, clinical signs, reversal, and returning to wellness. “Here, the data could be optimised to improve wellness with actionable recommendations at an early stage, would help in early identification of the disease and thus, move to a preventive approach in the treatment of a person,” he said.
He said that traditional wellness could be transformed into big-data-driven scientific wellness from the genome and phenome, and help identify deficiencies, correct clinical chemistries, identify and eliminate toxicities, and thus, enable an individual into healthy ageing.
Dr D. Nageshwar Reddy, chairman, AIG Hospitals, told Deccan Chronicle, “Dr Leroy Hood’s discoveries have revolutionised the field of medicine and life sciences. Dr Hood stresses that detecting diseases early and the big data could be critical in adopting the preventive approach. This could be a ground-breaking initiative in the country because it could change the very dynamics of healthcare in India and we are discussing on how to incorporate this model in India.”
