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Good afternoon. Healthcare is complicated. You'll learn a little more today so let's get started. If you were forwarded this, get your own by signing up here.

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ONE HEALTHCARE ARTICLE

The Negative Clue

Swift action is oft necessary to help contain outbreaks. Here's how big data can help us in the fight against infectious diseases.

I did something a little different for this week's article. It starts with a mystery relevant to the theme. I talk about a surprising way that data can be used to aid early diagnosis of infectious diseases and other health conditions.

You can read it below or in your browser.​

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I want to open this up with a story. A mystery if you will. Can you figure out the answer? Here goes.

A detective walked into a hardware store on his day off and wanted some peace and quiet As he’s quietly browsing the racks, his phone rings. It’s his police officer friend, Kirby. He says he’s got a suspect but he’s not sure if it’s really him. His curiosity piqued, the detective agrees to weigh in.

Minutes later, Kirby arrives with the suspect in tow. The suspect had an unkempt beard, with deep wrinkles in his forehead. His unkempt appearance lent an uneasiness to his presence in the store. Kirby began to speak.

“He says he couldn’t have been the perpetrator because he’s been working at the docks all morning. He’s a fisherman…We searched him and turned up nothing, so I’m a bit stumped really. He kept saying that he was just at work, and he was going home early because he didn’t feel too well. ” He paused in thought before continuing. “His features match the eyewitness description and I’m still a bit uncertain. Story checks out, he does work at the dock…” The detective raised an eyebrow.

“So you think he did it?”

Kirby responded sheepishly: “No, I’m afraid not. He’s the prime suspect in this case however, and I don’t know how to test his alibi. There’s just something off about the whole thing.”

The detective stood up and walked over to the shifty fisherman. “So you were working at the docks all morning?” The fisherman nodded in affirmation. “And you were going straight home after work? No stops anywhere else?” The fisherman nodded once more. The detective straightened up and looked at his friend.

“It’s him, Kirby,” the detective said, “it’s him.” Kirby was shocked.

“But how do you know he’s lying?” Kirby, still unconvinced by his friend's confidence.

Can you figure out how the detective knew the suspect was lying?

I’ll give you some time to think about it. Perhaps another example will help you understand.

An unknown virus is spreading across the planet at warp speed. Its presence is troubling and in its early stages, must be contained in order to save more lives. However, our resources are limited. We can only divert so many resources to every area before we are forced to cut back. Do we have anything at our disposal, data, tools, anything, to help us predict where an outbreak will occur or find areas that are at risk of becoming a hotspot and thus, need our intervention?

Consider this. Every time we type into a search box, we reveal a little about ourselves. This little area houses our embarrassing questions– the ones we’re afraid to ask out loud, the things we fear and the things we wish to understand. By using anonymized, aggregated data, it could be possible to tease out subtle patterns.

Say someone googles “pancreatic cancer what should i do?” In that case, sure, you can easily determine that maybe the searcher has pancreatic cancer. But what if you worked your way backwards? What if you looked at the data of all the people who searched “just diagnosed with pancreatic cancer” and trawl through the weeks or months leading up to that search to look for any googled health symptoms? That could be possible. We search and we forget. But the search engine remembers. In a way, it’s a memex for symptoms.

And if you’re thinking this is a bit far-fetched, here’s the kicker: Microsoft already did this with Bing data. They found that searching “indigestion” and then “abdominal pain” correlated with pancreatic cancer while using only “indigestion” as a search query correlated with a lower likelihood of having pancreatic cancer.

This is a significant because when it comes to fighting many diseases–early diagnosis is critical. In the future perhaps, trained professionals could harness these searches and it could become a diagnostic supplement. While there are a ways to go before we can clear this for use on a case by case basis; the possibility is amusing.

Psst! Here’s the paper if you’d like to read it.

Clusters of search engine data localized to an area is something we could use to inspect and predict outbreaks based on search volumes. Spikes in certain search phrases could inform our understanding of the movement and potential symptoms of any rapidly spreading disease. In another example, researchers have been able to map COVID-19 outbreaks in India using Google Trends. The data is there, we just need the means and expertise to meaningfully interpret it. In a way, these aren’t obvious clues. They’re invisible–negative clues.

Now back to the store with the detective. He claims the suspect is lying about working at the docks all morning and is thus, the perpetrator of the crime. Let's hear his reasoning.

The detective smiled at the skeptical officer.

“Simple. He says he’s been working at the docks all morning, presumably handling all sorts of fish and aquatic animals. If that were really true, as soon as he walked in, we would’ve experienced the pungent odor of these ‘fish’.”

The lack of odor was the negative clue. The moral of the story is to keep an eye out for the non-obvious. We would do well to ask ourselves: what other negative clues elude us?

​Share the link to this article.​

Topic tags: big data, analytics, diagnostics, disease prevention

TWO PATENTS

Apple Glasses and a New Method to Make Cognitive Decline Fighting Compounds

This week, I'd like to introduce you to two more patents. One is by Apple and the other is from Abbvie.

Oh look, an image from MONITORING A USER OF A HEAD-WEARABLE ELECTRONIC DEVICE (APPLE INC)

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Overview: This type of tech excites me because it could help us operationalize pain and potentially do things such as detect signs of stroke if it is sensitive to the subtle movements of the facial muscles. In the patent, they mention being able to use head gestures and hand gestures to control user interfaces.

Let me break this down.

According to the patent, 114 in the diagram refers to a sensor, which is the most exciting aspect of this patent:

“Sensor assembly 114 may include any suitable sensor or any suitable combination of sensors or sensor assemblies that may be operative to detect movements….of a user thereof and/or any other characteristics….its environment (e.g., physical activity or other characteristics of a user of HWD 100 [the device being patented], light content of the device environment, gas pollution content of the device environment, noise pollution content of the device environment, etc.).

Sensor assembly 114 may include any suitable sensor(s), including, but not limited to, one or more of a GPS sensor, accelerometer, directional sensor (e.g., compass), gyroscope, motion sensor, pedometer, passive infrared sensor, ultrasonic sensor, microwave sensor, a tomographic motion detector, a camera, a biometric sensor, a light sensor, a timer, or the like.”

“Sensor assembly 114 may include any suitable sensor components or subassemblies for detecting any suitable biometric data and/or health data and/or sleep data and/or mindfulness data…may include any suitable biometric sensor…one or more health-related optical sensors, capacitive sensors,** thermal sensors, electric field (“eField”) sensors, and/or ultrasound sensors, such as photoplethysmogram (“PPG”) sensors, electrocardiography (“ECG”) sensors, galvanic skin response (“GSR”) sensors, posture sensors, stress sensors, photoplethysmogram sensors, and/or the like. These sensors can generate data providing **health-related information associated with the user.”

The sensor could help track health data like heart rate, posture, respiratory rate and oxygen saturation. The sensor could even help determine “steps taken, flights of stairs climbed, calories burned, distance walked, distance run, minutes of exercise performed and exercise quality, time of sleep and sleep quality, nutritional intake (e.g., foods ingested and their nutritional value), mindfulness activities and quantity and quality thereof (e.g., reading efficiency, data retention efficiency), any suitable work accomplishments of any suitable type (e.g., as may be sensed or logged by user input information indicative of such accomplishments)....”

The HWD (Head-wearable electronic device), as denoted as 100 in the diagram can include a “timer that can be used, for example, to add time dimensions to various attributes of the detected physical activity, such as a duration of a user’s physical activity or inactivity, time(s) of a day when the activity is detected or not detected…”

Basically, a pair of these smart glasses could hook right into the existing stats Apple already provides you in terms of monitoring your physical activity, and environmental conditions to create a greater synergy within the Apple ecosystem.

PATENT FOR SYNTHESIZING COMPOUNDS THAT PREVENT COGNITIVE DECLINE (ABBVIE) Link​

Overview: Part of Abbvie's work is creating new drugs. This patent happens to be for the creation of a series of drugs that have been researched for their potential role in cognitive decline.

A litte more detail: There’s this thing called S1P and it’s a molecule that is found in a lot of different cellular responses like your cells proliferating or moving. S1P binds to receptors of different cell types. S1P5 receptors are one type that could be targeted to treat cognitive disorders. Abbvie thinks there’s an untapped market for these compounds and its patent filing indicates as much.

(This patent is a super technical one with lots of specifications but you should check it out!)

Here’s a supplemental paper worth reading: Adlard et al., “A Novel Approach to Rapidly Prevent Age-Related Cognitive Decline,” Aging Cell, 2014, 13(2): 351-359.​

THREE CURATED LINKS

Broad Spectrum

Taylor Swift, An Important Perspective, and Affordable Healthcare

Link 1: Taylor Swift as EHR Vendor Logos (TWITTER)
​I absolutely love this Twitter thread. It's so amusing. The title of this link is fairly self explanatory. Check it out!

Link 2: A Black Psychiatrist’s Account of Grief (heavy) (STAT NEWS)
​This is a powerful piece from Dr. Chase T.M. Anderson. It provides his perspective and I encourage you to read it.

Link 3: Healthcare is Dumb (SELF-TITLED)
​Looking for an affordable healthcare plan? Anthony Castrio made this resource that helps you shop around for a good healthcare plan through university. You can find insurance for less than $500 per month using this!

END NOTE

Wrapping Up

Thanks for reading the MKSTN newsletter. I'm super excited to see where we go next. If you spot anything inaccurate or just want to leave a comment, let me know here or just hit reply.

Feel free to share this with a coworker or friend. I'd love it if you did. :)

Cheers,
Eashan Kotha