Writing for Forbes, Senior Lecturer Guadalupe Hayes-Mota '08, SM '16, MBA '16 emphasizes the importance of implementing ethical frameworks when developing AI systems designed for use in healthcare. “The future of AI in healthcare not only needs to be intelligent,” writes Hayes-Mota. “It needs to be trusted. And in healthcare, trust is the ultimate competitive edge.”
Financial Times reporter Melissa Heikkilä spotlights how MIT researchers have uncovered evidence that increased use of AI tools by medical professionals risks “leading to worse health outcomes for women and ethnic minorities.” One study found that numerous AI models “recommended a much lower level of care for female patients,” writes Heikkilä. “A separate study by the MIT team showed that OpenAI’s GPT-4 and other models also displayed answers that had less compassion towards Black and Asian people seeking support for mental health problems.”
Prof. Rosalind Picard speaks with Bloomberg reporters Carol Massar and Tim Stenovec about technological advancements in wearable technology and how advances in the field could positively impact women’s healthcare. “The opportunities are huge for health with wearables and especially for women’s health,” says Picard. “There are so many conditions that are different for women than for men, and they’re not only vastly understudied but the kind of data is very under sampled.”
Prof. Regina Barzilay speaks with Newsweek reporter Katherine Fung about the how hospitals around the world around increasingly adopting new technologies. “Countries with a centralized healthcare system, or centralized healthcare records, can do a much better job because they have so much data and so much ability to monitor what AI tools are doing," says Barzilay.
Prof. Marzyeh Ghassemi speaks with Boston Globe reporter Hiawatha Bray about her work uncovering issues with bias and trustworthiness in medical AI systems. “I love developing AI systems,” says Ghassemi. “I’m a professor at MIT for a reason. But it’s clear to me that naive deployments of these systems, that do not recognize the baggage that human data comes with, will lead to harm.”
The new Hood Pediatric Innovation Hub, a cornerstone of MIT’s Health and Life Sciences Collaborative (MIT HEALS), is aimed at addressing “underinvestment in pediatric healthcare innovations,” reports Isabel Hart for the Boston Business Journal. Prof. Elazer Edelman, faculty lead for the hub, explains that: “We are trying to build a new culture providing innovation to those who have least access to it and will most benefit from it.”
Former postdoctoral associate Wen Shuhao and postdoctoral fellows Ma Jian and Lai Lipeng co-founded Xtalpi, a biotech startup that “uses AI and quantum physics-based calculations to find suitable structures that are fit for drug making,” reports Zinnia Lee for Forbes. The company plans to expand their technology to other industries such as solar panels and electric vehicle batteries.
NeuroBionics, an MIT spinoff, has developed bioelectric fibers that could deliver neuromodulation therapy aimed at helping people who live with neurological conditions like depression, epilepsy, and Parkinson’s disease, reports Connie Loizos for TechCrunch. “The fibers are powered by a fairly standard implantable battery that’s shaped like an AirPod case, designed to last five to 10 years, and is used by other medical device makers for spinal cord stimulation, among other things,” writes Loizos.
WCVB-TV's Chronicle spotlights Prof. Linda Griffith, “a forerunner in the field of biological engineering,” for her research investigating endometriosis and breaking the stigma around menstruation. Griffith founded the MIT Center for Gynepathology Research in 2009 and “one of their objectives is to help develop ways of staging endometriosis, similar to how cancer is characterized.” Griffith notes that by focusing on menstruation and making it a science, “I think we will really change the game for women.
Boston Business Journal reporter Hannah Green spotlights the MIT Health and Life Sciences Collaborative, a new effort designed to connect researchers, medical professionals, and industry leaders in a shared mission to address some of the most pressing health challenges of our time. Green notes that the collaborative aims to “spur high-impact discoveries and health solutions through interdisciplinary projects across engineering, science, AI, economics, business, policy, design, and the humanities.”
Researchers at MIT have developed a new AI model capable of assessing a patient’s risk of pancreatic cancer, reports Erez Meltzer for Forbes. “The model could potentially expand the group of patients who can benefit from early pancreatic cancer screening from 10% to 35%,” explains Meltzer. “These kinds of predictive capabilities open new avenues for preventive care.”
Forbes reporter Ulrich Boser spotlights Prof. Rosalind Picard and her work toward advancing “the capability of computers to recognize human emotions.” “AI can enhance learning, and chatbots can supplement many aspects of teaching and tutoring but true success lies in establishing better tutoring platforms to support – not replace – teachers,” writes Boser.
MIT scientists have created a high-resolution brain map of the neurons that encode the meanings of various words, reports Sara Reardon for Nature. “The results hint that, across individuals, the brain uses the same standard categories to classify words,” Reardon explains, “helping us to turn sound into sense.”
Sonia Vallabh and Eric Minikel, senior group leaders from the Broad Institute have created a gene-editing tool to combat prion diseases, reports Karen Weintraub for USA Today. The approach “should also work against diseases such as Huntington's, Parkinson's, ALS and even Alzheimer's, which result from the accumulation of toxic proteins,” Weintraub writes.
Cofounded by postdoctoral associate Wen Shuhao and postdoctoral fellows Ma Jian and Lai Lipeng, biotech startup Xtalpi "combines AI, quantum physics, cloud computing and robotic automation to find novel molecules that could be developed into new medicines,” reports Zinnia Lee for Forbes. “Xtalpi has also recently expanded into discovering new chemical compounds for applications such as agriculture, cosmetics, healthcare, as well as petrochemicals and new materials for electric vehicle batteries,” writes Lee.