COMMENTARY

10 Tech Advances That Can Change Medicine

December 16, 2016

Dear Medscape Colleagues,

Last year, I put out my first top 10 tech list, and it seemed to get a lot of interest. So here is this year's list, not in any rank order. There are many more important advances than I list here, but I have focused on the ones that can make a real difference for patients and patient care. I have no conflict of interest with any of the companies listed here.

Artificial intelligence Comes to Medicine

Artificial intelligence (AI) has hit its stride in many other areas of our daily lives, and it is starting to demonstrate the kind of impact it can have in medicine. The extraordinary ability of AI to accurately interpret pathology slides, x-rays, skin lesions, and retinas has recently been shown.^[1] There are over 90 start-up companies working on AI applications in healthcare, no less the engagement of tech titans that include IBM (Watson), Apple, Google, and Microsoft, all of which have made major investments. A recent 60 Minutes segment filmed at the University of North Carolina suggested that AI could find an evidence-based therapy for 30% of patients with cancer that was not identified by their oncologists.

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Any views expressed above are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect the views of WebMD or Medscape.

Cite this: Eric J. Topol. 10 Tech Advances That Can Change Medicine - Medscape - Dec 16, 2016.

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