Cancer has been around for quite some time now, and since the 20th century the number of cancer cases seem to have exploded. Mankind has been trying to eradicate cancer since a long time but in vain. Cancer has been able to successfully evade different drugs and bounce back finding so many victims. Several researches have been conducted over time to find a successful cure for cancer and yet cancer continues to be one of the biggest enemies of humankind.
In this digital era, it was only a matter of time before technology came to the rescue to find a cure for cancer. According to the latest AI blogs, Microsoft is planning to make use of Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning in order to discover a cure for cancer. Earlier in 2017, Microsoft launched Healthcare NExT that aimed to bring together artificial intelligence, health research, and the expertise of its industry partners for providing people with means to live healthier lives and cure deadly diseases (Leary, 2017).
Microsoft Cambridge UK Lab’s biologist, Jasmin Fisher said that they are trying to revolutionize the way research is done on a daily basis in biology. With one team of researchers making use of machine learning and natural language processing in order to help world’s leading oncologists to figure out the most effective solution for cancer treatment by providing an intuitive way to sort through all the available research data. (Linn, 2017)
There are other teams that have been assigned to pairing machine learning with computer vision in order to provide detailed understanding of how tumor of a cancer patient are progressing. Along with this Microsoft also has a team assigned for creating powerful algorithms to understand how cancer develops and treatments that could be most effective (Linn, 2017).
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Microsoft is expanding Healthcare NExT to cancer research with the aim to find a cure or an effective treatment for the disease. Microsoft being a tech company, its approach towards cancer is technological instead of a medical one which means, that it views living cells as computers and diseases like cancer equivalent to glitches in the system. Microsoft views cancer cells as something that can be reprogrammed rather than being destroyed; deleted instead of killed off (Sandle, 2017).
While discovering a cure for cancer may seem like an ambitious goal by Microsoft, taking a digital approach may just turn out to be the right and unique approach needed for finding the cure. By maintaining the drive and focus, only time will tell what Microsoft is capable of developing?
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Source:
- Leary ,K (2017) “Microsoft Wants to Use AI and Machine Learning to Discover a Cure for Cancer” Futurism [online] available from: https://futurism.com/microsoft-ai-machine-learning-discover-cure-cancer/ [accessed January 2018]
- Linn , A (2017) “How Microsoft computer scientists and researchers are working to ‘solve’ cancer” Microsoft Story Labs [online] available from: https://news.microsoft.com/stories/computingcancer/ [accessed January 2018]
- Sandle, T (2017) “Microsoft enters race to find cancer cure” Digital Journal [online] available from: http://www.digitaljournal.com/life/health/microsoft-enters-race-to-find-cancer-cure/article/506800 [accessed January 2018]
