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Veterans can access their medical info through Apple's Health Records
Apple is expanding its Health Records feature in iOS to cover one of the larger groups in the US: namely, veterans. The company is partnering with the Department of Veterans Affairs to make servicemen and women's medical info available in one place on their iPhones, including known conditions, prescriptions and procedures. It's the record-sharing system "of its kind" at Veterans Affairs, Apple said.
IBM extends deal using Watson to support veterans with cancer
IBM is making further use of Watson in the fight against cancer. The tech giant has extended a team-up with the US Department of Veterans Affairs that taps Watson for help treating soldiers with cancer, particularly stage 4 patients who have few other options. The new alliance runs through "at least" June 2019 and will continue the partnership's existing strategy. Oncologists and pathologists first sequence tumor DNA, and then use Watson's AI to interpret the data and spot mutations that might open up therapeutic choices.
AI will shape health care plans for US veterans
American veterans needing health care are about to get help from an unusual source: artificial intelligence. The Department of Veterans Affairs and Flow Health have forged a 5-year alliance that will see the two build a massive medical knowledge graph (based on the records of 22 million veterans) that uses deep learning to customize health plans for vets. The system aims to identify the common genetic factors that make people vulnerable to given diseases and not only improve diagnoses, but recommend treatments on a case-by-case basis.
DARPA-funded TechShop location to open in Arlington, VA next year
Just ahead of its Menlo Park location's crowdfunded move, TechShop has announced a second (or third, if you want to get technical) space to let your inner maker flag fly. Later this year Arlington, VA's Crystal City neighborhood will see construction begin on the new idea-friendly space near our nation's capitol, with a projected opening of early 2014. It's the latest effort from a partnership between TechShop, DARPA and the Department of Veterans Affairs Center for Innovation, and could help the state's 837,000 veterans develop usable skills through free job-training programs. We thought TechShop might consider a region with lower rent for its next space, but since Virginia has one of the highest veteran populations in the area, who are we to judge?
Google adds medication to the Knowledge Graph, might ease our minds through search
It's no secret that many of us turn to Google searches for medical advice, much to the chagrin of doctors who have to contend with periodic bad attempts at self-diagnosis. Google might not have a cure for hypochondriacs, but it can stop all of us from taking risks at the pharmacy: it's adding medicine to the Knowledge Graph. Search for medication and the side results panel will bring up data from the Department of Veterans Affairs, the FDA and the National Library of Medicine. Apart from a very top-level summary of a drug's role, the Knowledge Graph will show alternative names, related drugs and (most importantly) risks. The search firm is quick to warn that it's not giving us a license to prescribe our own treatment -- we'll want to talk to someone who swore the Hippocratic Oath, if there's more than a headache. The depth of Google's new search tool could still do more to assuage worried patients than a pill bottle label.
