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Streaks of color swirl through a pulsing, black-and-white image of a patient’s heart. They represent blood, and they’re color-coded based on speed: turquoise and green for the fastest flow, yellow and red for the slowest. This real-time video, which can be rotated and viewed from any angle, allows doctors to spot problems like a leaky heart valve or a failing surgical repair with unprecedented speed. And artificial intelligence (AI) imaging technology made it possible. “It’s quite simple, it’s like a video game,” said Dr. Albert Hsiao, an associate professor of radiology at the University of California, San Diego, who developed the technology while a medical resident at Stanford University. There’s a lot going on behind the scenes to support this simplicity. Each 10-minute scan produces 2 to 10 gigabytes of data. To handle such huge, complicated data sets, Hsiao and his colleagues at Arterys, the company he helped found in 2012 to develop the technology, decided to build the infrastructure on the internet, where it can be accessed by servers from other researchers. And now, investigators around the world are using this cloud-based infrastructure to share and test medical AI imaging models in the Arterys Marketplace. “We’ve made it almost as easy to get medical AI online as to upload a YouTube video,” said Arterys product strategy manager Christian Ulstrup. Arterys decided to open up… read on >

Back before coronavirus took over the headlines, every week seemed to bring another report about artificial intelligence besting human doctors at everything from diagnosing skin cancer to spotting pneumonia on chest X-rays. But these artificial intelligence (AI) tools — computer programs that get better at performing a task by being “trained” on the right kind of data — are years away from being used to help diagnose real-life patients, according to the doctors helping to develop and test them. “We still have a lot of unknowns in terms of generalizing and validation of these systems before we can start using them as standard of care,” said Dr. Matthew Hanna, a pathologist at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York City. Generalizing means building an AI tool that can be used in multiple hospitals, and validation involves testing and adjusting an AI tool to ensure it’s accurate. “These are the types of studies we need to do to make sure these models are performing properly and not potentially harming patients,” Hanna explained. Meanwhile, humans are in no rush to swap their doctor for an AI diagnosis. In a 2019 New York University-Harvard study, business school students said they’d be OK with getting poorer quality health care as long as it was provided by a human instead of AI. People resisted AI, the study authors found,… read on >

Bright yellow and looking like a headless deer, Spot can travel across ground too risky for humans. “Built for dirt and danger,” in the words of its maker Boston Dynamics, this robot is now helping humans battle a different threat: the spread of coronavirus. Equipped with an iPad and two-way radio, Spot has been making the rounds at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston since April. Medical technicians use the robot to interview patients with suspected COVID-19 remotely, with no need to don personal protective equipment. Think of it as mobile telemedicine. Then there’s computer programs that pore through mountains of information to pluck out and analyze the relevant bits to help find a promising drug for COVID-19 after just two days’ work. Artificial intelligence (AI) tools are tackling the pandemic on every front: Robots that blast surfaces with high-power ultraviolet light are decontaminating hospitals around the world. Robots also stepped in to help Chinese hospitals cope with coronavirus, checking visitors’ temperatures, delivering food and medicine, keeping isolated wards clean and even offering a little entertainment. Medical robots can go where human doctors can’t, and process information much faster. But scientists are still only in the very early stages of using AI to treat patients. “There’s still a big gap between this kind of research and the clinical applications,” said Steve Jiang, a professor at… read on >

Preschoolers may spend more time on smartphones or tablets than their parents realize, and some use apps intended for teens and adults, researchers report. A new study tracked mobile device use among 350 children aged 3 to 5 over nine months and compared their findings with parents’ estimates of their use. Preschoolers with their own smartphones or tablets averaged two hours of screen time a day. Nearly three-quarters of their parents underestimated it. More than half of kids used devices for an hour or more, including 15% who spent at least four hours a day on mobile devices. Thirty-four percent of kids in the new study had their own digital device, according to the findings published recently in the journal Pediatrics. Kids in the study used between one and 85 apps. The most commonly used apps included YouTube, YouTube Kids, browsers, and streaming services such as Netflix. However, some apps related to gambling, violent games and general audience games without restrictions on the data they collect or share with third-party advertisers. “We found that most parents miscalculated their children’s time on mobile devices,” said lead author Dr. Jenny Radesky, a behavioral pediatrician at Michigan Medicine’s C.S. Mott Children’s Hospital in Ann Arbor. “They may also not be aware of what content is being shared or what apps are being marketed to children while they’re using… read on >

Many people under stay-at-home orders have turned to online yoga as a way to manage the stress. And a new research review suggests they’re onto something. The review, of 19 clinical trials, focused on the benefits of yoga for people with clinical mental health conditions ranging from anxiety disorders to alcohol dependence to schizophrenia. Overall, it found yoga classes helped ease those patients’ depression symptoms. And while the trials focused on in-person classes for people with formal diagnoses, there are broader implications, the researchers said. “Definitely, if you’ve thought about trying yoga, now is a great time to take the opportunity,” said Jacinta Brinsley, lead author on the review and a Ph.D. candidate at the University of South Australia School of Health Sciences in Adelaide. With yoga teachers worldwide now offering live-stream classes, she noted, people have a chance to find something that is right for them in their own homes. “Sometimes it takes a few tries to find the right type [of yoga],” Brinsley said. “Enjoyment is a really great indicator that it’s a good fit.” In general, physical activity is a recommended part of managing mental health disorders, according to Brinsley. Yoga — which combines physical movement with breathing exercises, meditation and other “mindfulness” practices — has been the subject of many studies. Some have found it can ease depression. That said, there… read on >

In a finding that illustrates how distracted driving laws are saving lives, researchers report that car crash deaths among teens plunged by one-third during a period when the number of U.S. states with such laws on the books tripled. “We found that states which had primary enforced distracted driving laws had lower fatal crashes involving 16- to 19-year-old drivers and passengers,” said study author Dr. Michael Flaherty. He’s an attending physician in pediatric critical care medicine with both Massachusetts General Hospital and the Shriners Hospitals for Children in Boston. Flaherty explained that “primary” distracted driving laws are the kind that authorize police to pull over a driver specifically because of a distracted driving infraction. In all, 40 states had that kind of law in place to ban texting while driving by 2017. By 2017, another six states had so-called “secondary” texting bans on the books, meaning distracted driving could only be cited if a driver was already pulled over for another reason. Beyond texting alone, 34 states had banned all cellphone use among novice drivers by 2017, Flaherty added, while 12 states had banned all cellphone use among drivers of all ages. To assess the impact of those laws, Flaherty’s team reviewed statistics on 38,000 fatal crashes, drawn from U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration data. They indicated that between 2007 and 2017, the overall… read on >

More than one-quarter of popular English-language COVID-19 information videos posted to YouTube are misleading, researchers warn. There are posts, for example, falsely claiming that drug companies already have a cure for COVID-19, but won’t sell it, and that different countries have stronger strains of coronavirus, a new study finds. YouTube viewers “should be skeptical, use common sense and consult reputable sources — public health agencies or physicians — to fact-check their information,” said study lead author Heidi Oi-Yee Li, a medical student at the University of Ottawa in Canada. With billions of viewers, YouTube has enormous potential to bolster or hamper public health efforts, Li and her colleagues said in background notes. But what they turned up in their recent YouTube search is “alarming,” Li said. “In an ideal world, social media platforms should take more responsibility for content uploaded,” she said. But “this is an unrealistic expectation, given the billions of users uploading information every second across the globe.” Li’s team did a simple keyword search for “coronavirus” and “COVID-19” on March 21, 2020. After compiling the top 75 videos for each of the search words, the team excluded all non-English clips, those exceeding an hour, duplicates, and anything not actually about COVID-19. The remaining 69 videos had already been viewed nearly 258 million times, they said. Just under one-third (29%) were clips from… read on >

The coronavirus pandemic has led many older adults to postpone medical care, a new survey finds. The University of Chicago survey found that 55% of U.S. adults aged 70 and older experienced a disruption in their medical care during the first month of social distancing. Thirty-nine percent put off non-essential care and 32% delayed primary or preventive care since social distancing began. And 15% said they delayed or canceled essential medical treatment, the survey found. “The first month of social distancing in America certainly saved lives, and yet it also created a situation where many older adults are not getting the care they need to manage serious health conditions,” said Dr. Bruce Chernof. He is president and CEO of the SCAN Foundation, an independent charity focused on care of older adults, that co-sponsored the survey. “As our nation grapples with when and how to reopen, the health care system will reckon with unaddressed medical needs and learn how to maximize new protocols to care for older adults with complex needs in flexible, person-centered ways,” Chernof added in a foundation news release. The researchers found that older adults are worried about delays in getting support to manage their medical conditions. Many doctors, however, are using telehealth to keep tabs on their patients. Nearly 25% said that their doctors had reached out to them since the start… read on >

Sparse traffic on U.S. roads during the coronavirus pandemic has spawned a spike in speeding and other types of reckless driving, the Governors Highway Safety Association (GHSA) says. Here are some examples. Police in Colorado, Indiana, Nebraska and Utah have clocked drivers going more than 100 miles per hour on highways. In Los Angeles, cars are going as much as 30% faster on some streets, prompting changes to traffic lights and pedestrian walk signals. In New York City, automated speed cameras issued 24,765 speeding tickets on March 27 — nearly double the number issued daily a month earlier — despite far fewer cars being on the road. Some states have lower crash rates but more serious crashes. Car crash death rates are on the rise in Massachusetts, and pedestrian deaths are on the rise in Nevada and Rhode Island. Car crashes and related deaths in Minnesota are more than double what they were at the same time period in previous years, and half of the deaths were due to speeding or careless/negligent driving. “While COVID-19 is clearly our national priority, our traffic safety laws cannot be ignored,” GHSA executive director Jonathan Adkins said in a news release from the association. “Law enforcement officials have the same mission as health care providers — to save lives.” If you must drive, he said, “buckle up, follow the… read on >

Low-dose aspirin may reduce the risk of several types of digestive tract cancers, according to a team of researchers in Europe. For the new study, the researchers analyzed 113 studies investigating colon/rectal (“bowel”), head and neck, esophageal, stomach, liver, gallbladder, bile duct and pancreatic cancers in the general population. The studies were published up to 2019. The investigators concluded there was a link between regular use of aspirin — taking at least one or two aspirin pills a week — and a significant reduction in the risk of all these cancers, with the exception of head and neck cancer. The study was published April 16 in the journal Annals of Oncology. For colon/rectal cancer, extensive evidence stemmed from 45 studies. “There are about 175,000 deaths from bowel cancer predicted for 2020 in the European Union, of which about 100,000 will be in people aged between 50 and 74,” said study senior author Dr. Carlo La Vecchia. He’s a professor of epidemiology in the school of medicine at the University of Milan, Italy. “If we assume that regular use of aspirin increases from 25% to 50% in this age group, this would mean that between 5,000 to 7,000 deaths from bowel cancer, and between 12,000 and 18,000 new cases could be avoided if further studies show that aspirin does indeed cause the reduction in cancer risk,”… read on >