Machine Learning, Precision Medicine: What’s Hot in Healthtech 11/17

BOS Healthtech EXOME

With the election in our wake (was there a spike in anxiety and sleep meds?), we can turn our full attention to our What’s Hot in Boston Healthtech event, which will take place next Thursday (Nov. 17) at the Broad Institute in Kendall Square.

You can find more details about the event and get your tickets here. If you act quickly, you can save $155 on regular registration with our Procrastinator’s Special.

We have a fantastic array of speakers looking at everything from telemedicine to healthcare marketplaces (think Amazon Web Services for healthcare) to what’s next for digital health beyond electronic health records. We even will have live demos of brain monitoring and a new way to draw blood (volunteers for either?).

But I’m especially pleased to be taking part in a chat with Colin Hill, co-founder and CEO of GNS Healthcare, on the subject of How Breakthroughs in Machine Learning are Transforming Precision Medicine. Hill will give a short talk, and then I will sit down for some quick questions—and any from the audience as well. “It’s different from IBM Watson, it’s different from what Google and Optum are doing,” says Hill. But, he adds, he isn’t one for conceptual ideas alone. He plans to give the audience specific instances on how breakthroughs in machine learning are tackling important problems in medicine—and how what GNS is doing first in colon cancer and diabetes might one day be extended to medicine more broadly. Hill says he wants “to get people really fired up with what has changed.”

Again, that is just one component of what promises to be a fascinating afternoon. You can see the full agenda and register here. See you next Thursday.

Author: Robert Buderi

Bob is Xconomy's founder and chairman. He is one of the country's foremost journalists covering business and technology. As a noted author and magazine editor, he is a sought-after commentator on innovation and global competitiveness. Before taking his most recent position as a research fellow in MIT's Center for International Studies, Bob served as Editor in Chief of MIT's Technology Review, then a 10-times-a-year publication with a circulation of 315,000. Bob led the magazine to numerous editorial and design awards and oversaw its expansion into three foreign editions, electronic newsletters, and highly successful conferences. As BusinessWeek's technology editor, he shared in the 1992 National Magazine Award for The Quality Imperative. Bob is the author of four books about technology and innovation. Naval Innovation for the 21st Century (2013) is a post-Cold War account of the Office of Naval Research. Guanxi (2006) focuses on Microsoft's Beijing research lab as a metaphor for global competitiveness. Engines of Tomorrow (2000) describes the evolution of corporate research. The Invention That Changed the World (1996) covered a secret lab at MIT during WWII. Bob served on the Council on Competitiveness-sponsored National Innovation Initiative and is an advisor to the Draper Prize Nominating Committee. He has been a regular guest of CNBC's Strategy Session and has spoken about innovation at many venues, including the Business Council, Amazon, eBay, Google, IBM, and Microsoft.