Digitization as a pacemaker of the healthcare system?
In this Ö1 radio report from 28 January 2022, several experts talk about digitization in the healthcare system. Listen to the the potentials of artificial intelligence for the diagnosis of cancer, the role of the biobank and their collaboration with Google.
Interview part with Kurt Zatloukal, BBMRI.at director, and Heimo Mueller (both from BBMRI.at partner Med Uni Graz):
Already today, artificial intelligence (AI) is often used in medine. A current research project at BBMRI.at partner Med Uni Graz aims to show how AI can also help to find the perfect form of therapy. Anonymized tissue samples from colon carcinomas stored at BBMRI.at partner Biobank Graz serve as a basis for training AI algorithms.
Anonymized samples of colon carcinomas from the past 30 years are archived in Biobank Graz. With their help, the pathologist and BBMRI.at Director Kurt Zatloukal, together with a team of researchers from Med Uni Graz and in cooperation with Google, is training an algorithm that is supposed to extract more information from the histological tissue sections than physicians have been able to do until now by looking at the sections in the microscope.
The aim of the research team is to utilize AI to find information that medical doctors can use for better therapy planning. The algorithm should recognize more details than the human eye.
These analyses are made possible by the gigantic data from BBMRI.at partner Biobank Graz. This is where histological sections from surgical procedures have been archived for decades. The mass of data is also the reason for the cooperation with Google. This research project undermines the important functions biobanks have and serves as an example of the significant contribution biobanks make to the support of research and to innovations in the field of medicine.
