Crowdsourcing, precision medicine, augmented reality: the future of medicine is going digital

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What the chairs of medical technology, medical informatics and medical electronics at universities are currently researching could soon change the future of medicine dramatically. An overview of the most promising research projects.  

Big data and crowdsourcing

Laboratory data from blood or histological examinations, statistical results from experiments and clinical studies, and of course image data. For all this different data, scientists are looking for strategies to organize the flood of information and bundle it in standardized databases. These are then supplemented by annotations that provide information about the origin, properties and content of the data. At the Chair for IT Applications in Medicine & Augmented Reality at Technical University of Munich Professor Nassir Navab and his team are working, among other things, to simplify the assignment of such annotations. The computer is told which cell in the picture is a cancer cell so that it can learn from it and later recognize cancer cells independently. For lengthy data analysis, Professor Navab has developed a computer game in which less experienced internet users can participate in so-called crowdsourcing and "shoot away malicious cancer cells".

Personalized medicine

Personalized therapy is necessary in order not to burden the patient unnecessarily, to increase the success of therapy and thus to reduce costs in the long term. A team from the Heinz Nixdorf Chair for Medical Electronics at the Technical University of Munich has therefore developed sensors that measure in advance how strongly the cells taken from the patient's tumor react to various chemotherapeutic agents. The doctor can then apply the active ingredient that is most suitable. The system is currently being tested in a preclinical study in cooperation with the Asklepios Klinik Hamburg-Barmbek. Ideally, a genetic Review of the patient automatically determines the right chemotherapy drug. Thanks to this so-called precision medicine, the doctor should already know in the future, based on the genetic profile, which medications are best for the patient.

Virtual connection to the doctor

Digitized medical data is not only used for research, it can also directly relieve the burden on doctors if, above all, chronic patients remain in virtual contact with the doctor. Bernhard Wolf and his team from the Technical University of Munich have developed a prototype for this with the COMES system in recent years. This collects individual data using various sensors and transfers it to a database, where it is processed and evaluated. If a value exceeds the specified limit values, the system automatically alerts the attending doctor or the responsible nursing service using a cell phone. For example, you can monitoring your pulse, blood pressure, weight or blood sugar levels. The patient always releases the data beforehand. The doctor can follow the therapy of patients equipped with COMES, intervene as a precaution or arrange interventions via the medical center.

Augmented reality

In addition to the biochemical and genetic data, image data from a wide variety of examinations represent another important pillar of digital medicine. Professor Nassir Navab from the Chair of Computer Science in Medicine & Augmented Reality, for example, develops systems with which a surgeon works together with several teams of computer scientists and doctors can look inside the patient during the operation. In a project by Westphalian University Medical technology scientists are developing an ultrasound system that gives the attending physician, using data glasses, a direct three-dimensional view of the patient, supplemented by virtual information, so that tissue samples can be taken quickly and precisely, even with the smallest suspected cancer sources.

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