COULD AI RESUSCITATE HEALTH CARE?
Friday night I stumbled onto a PBS show comparing the discovery of penicillin to that of
Halicin. (For me, what ‘painting the town’ looks like in 2024!)
Quick review.
Alexander Fleming serendipitously discovered penicillin in a messy laboratory in 1928. It wasn’t until 1942 however, that antibiotics were widely available. During the subsequent ‘antibiotic era’ (between the 1950s and 1970s), life expectancy jumped from 47 to 78.8 years.
Unfortunately, we’ve moved into the antibiotic resistant era of MRSA, PRSP, VRE and MDRGNB; threatening lives while significantly increasing health care costs.
Enter Halicin, the first of a
new class of antibiotics, ‘discovered’ by AI.
MIT researchers were able to screen more than a hundred million chemical compounds in a matter of days - not years - using a machine-learning algorithm. The results; “one of the most powerful antibiotics that has been discovered to date.” (Source; MIT bio-engineer James Collins.)
Will we stop losing friends and loved ones to
hospital infections? Will AI lower health care costs? Will life expectancy jump another 20+ years?
Good grief! What will my Friday nights look like then?
