Health sciences and technology

CNBC contributor Tom Popomaronis highlights a study by MIT researchers that demonstrates how back-and-forth exchanges could help children develop stronger communications skills.  

Prof. Regina Barzilay speaks with NPR reporter Richard Harris about her work developing AI systems aimed at improving identification of breast cancer in mammograms, inspired by her experience with the disease. “At every point of my treatment, there would be some point of uncertainty, and I would say, 'Gosh, I wish we had the technology to solve it,’” says Barzilay.

Axios reporter Kaveh Waddell writes about a new study by MIT researchers that examines the potential impact of adversarial attacks on health care systems. “If someone sending in data for analysis has a different goal than the owner of the system doing the analysis, there's a potential for funny business,” Waddell explains.

MIT researchers have found that medical systems could be vulnerable to adversarial attacks, report Cade Matz and Craig Smith for The New York Times. AI systems could exacerbate the threat of “stakeholders bilking the system by subtly changing billing codes and other data in computer systems that track health care visits,” write Metz and Smith.

Profs. Regina Barzilay and Dina Katabi discuss how AI could transform the field of medicine in a special episode of CNBC’s Squawk Box, broadcast live from MIT’s celebration for the new MIT Schwarzman College of Computing. Barzilay explains that her goal is “to teach machines to do stuff that humans cannot do, for instance predict who is going to get cancer within two years.”

WBUR’s Deborah Becker speaks with Prof. Regina Barzilay about her work applying AI to health care and Prof. Sangbae Kim about how the natural world has inspired his robotics research during a special Radio Boston segment highlighting innovation in the greater Boston area.

Prof. Eric Alm speaks with New Scientist reporter Elie Dolgin about his work building a repository of gut microbes. “What we are doing is taking a snapshot of the biodiversity of human gut microbes on Earth today,” Alm explains, “and then preserving that for future generations so that we always have the biodiversity that co-evolved with us stored somewhere.”

New York Times reporter Janet Morrissey spotlights Prof. Regina Barzilay and Prof. Dina Katabi’s work developing new AI systems aimed at improving health care. “It’s absolutely the future; it’s even the present,” says Barzilay. “The question is how fast do we adopt it?”

Prof. Rosalind Picard speaks with NBC Mach reporter Jessica Wapner about how wearable devices could be used to help detect and predict episodes of depression. “We’d love to get to you before you get depressed,” explains Picard, “and help you put things back in your life before you get in trouble.”

MIT startup Vicarious Surgical is developing a minimally invasive surgical technique that combines virtual reality and miniature surgical robots, reports Jonathan Sieber for TechCrunch. The founders say they hope “to drive down both the cost of higher impact surgeries and access to the best surgeons through remote technologies.”

TIME reporter Jamie Ducharme highlights how Prof. Dina Katabi has developed a device that uses wireless signals to collect information about how well a person is sleeping. “If we can monitor health continuously but passively in a patient’s natural environment, that can help dramatically,” explains Katabi.

HealthDay reporter Robert Preidt writes that a new study by MIT researchers finds that long stays in space can cause spinal muscles to shrink and become fatty. “As NASA plans for future missions to Mars and beyond, these results can be used to guide future countermeasures,” says graduate student Katelyn Burkhart.

Wall Street Journal reporter Brian Gormley speaks with Dr. Leo Anthony Celi, a principal researcher scientist at IMES, who encourages hospitals to share electronic medical data on intensive care patients. “De-identified data from 60,000 such cases now are freely available in a database called Medical Information Mart for Intensive Care,” writes Gormley of Celi’s work. “Scientists regularly publish papers based on this repository.”

CBS Boston reporter Dr. Mallika Marshall spotlights research by researchers at MIT and Brigham and Women’s Hospital to develop robotic prosthetic limbs controlled by the brain. “It’s a wonderful experience as a researcher,” explains Herr of the work’s impact. “They walk away and start crying or laughing and giggling and say, ‘my gosh I have my body back, I have leg back, I have my life back.’”

Boston Globe reporter Jessie Scanlon spotlights Prof. Regina Barzilay’s work developing machine learning systems that can identify patients at risk of developing breast cancer. Barzilay is creating “software that aims to teach a computer to analyze mammogram images more effectively than the human eye can and to catch signs of cancer in its earliest phases.”