Difference between revisions of "Talk:Open Source Medicine"

Revision as of 10:49, 18 June 2011

The biggest killers

Cancer, cardiovascular disease and stroke are already dealt with in the article. It would be nice to get some mention of these:

• AIDS -
  • Vaccines: Maybe create a new section on vaccine design and production. HIV is trickier than any other virus to find a cure or vaccine against. It mutates more than any other virus and though there are antibodies against it, they are effective against only a few strains. Vaccines have been proven that protect against 40% of strains; this is not clinically useful, but proves that a HIV vaccine is possible. 'Broadly neutralizing antibodies' that are effective against 91% of strains have been found [1], and a cocktail of antibodies could be 100% effective. We have identified a site on the virus that doesn't mutate - the viral spike glycoproteins - the antibodies that latch onto that site, and the genes that generate these antibodies. The trick now is to develop something like a bacterium that resembles the viral spike glycoproteins yet elicits a strong immune system response. This will train the immune system to attack the spike, hence to attack all strains of HIV. Attaching it to a bacterium would mean it could be cultured quickly and cheaply. (Incidentally, the research methodology pioneered in this quest for an AIDS vaccine might also be used to develop a universal flu vaccine [2]. This might be relevant to the Pandemic preparedness page.)
  • NK cells
  • Proteomics??? The proteome of HIV has been mapped, but I think no one yet knows whether it could be controlled with proteomic interventions. --Balatro 10:31, 18 June 2011 (CEST)
  • Education is probably the real answer, at least until a cure or vaccine is found.
  • Nanobots could, of course, be programmed to search-and-destroy, but they are rather far off in the future
• Malaria - One of the most interesting ways to control malaria, and certainly the cheapest, is with permaculture. A bat-house will control mosquitos^[3], planting plants rich in citronella oil around human habitations will repel mosquitos and growing the Polyporus umbellatus mushroom is effective against the parasite itself.

Interesting links

• http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/13/health/research/13alzheimer.html?_r=1
• http://www.openclinical.org/

Proteomics

• http://www.ted.com/talks/david_agus_a_new_strategy_in_the_war_on_cancer.html
• http://www.ted.com/talks/danny_hillis_two_frontiers_of_cancer_treatment.html

Regenerative medicine

• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tijEl8I38mo&feature=related

Imaging

• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pqTkuaAykBw

Vaccines

• http://www.ted.com/talks/seth_berkley_hiv_and_flu_the_vaccine_strategy.html

Open Medical AI

• Communicates with patient in natural language
• Turns every patient into a data point - bridges gap between clinic and research
• Accesses medical journals (with Natural Language Processing)
• Interprets scans (with machine vision)
• Analyzes test results, like proteomics, genomics, blood tests
• Simulations of biochemistry, proteomics
• Analyzes small, wireless sensors
• Makes decisions (with Bayesian logic, expert systems, machine learning)
• Integrated with an Electronic Medical Record system
• All this done by cloud computing

http://www.kurzweilai.net/ibm-to-collaborate-with-nuance-to-apply-watson-analytics-technology-to-healthcare

Unfortunately, most of the development in this field is being done by private companies; there is not yet a dynamic open-source project. There was EgaDSS, but it seems to have stalled out. There is an X-Prize with a $10 million purse to stimulate medical A.I, but this will lead away from open-source.