I have been optimistic about the potential for voice recognition for many years. In my 2001 book, Net Attitude: What It Is, How to Get It, and Why Your Company Can’t Survive Without It, I discussed the ability to translate languages. Adoption was slow for a decade, but is now accelerating with Amazon Alexa, Apple Siri, Google Now, Microsoft Cortana, and the Skype Translator. Listening to a voice and converting it to meaningful text is one of many forms of artificial intelligence. IBM Research has developed another form of AI called Avicenna. The Avicenna software can read medical images, structured data, and electronic health records. The result is a productivity boost for radiologists.

IBM’s Tanveer Syeda-Mahmood, a researcher at the company’s Almaden research lab near San Jose, California, and chief scientist on the project demonstrated Avicenna’s potential.  Syeda-Mahmood fed Avicenna the case of a 28-year-old woman complaining of shortness of breath. The software examined data from the patient’s medical record and read text notes about family history of the patient. Avicenna also “looked” at digital pulmonary angiogram images of the blood vessels around her lungs. After analyzing all of this information, Avicenna suggested pulmonary embolism as the most likely diagnosis. An independent review by a radiologist made the same diagnosis.

Read the full article at: IBM’s Automated Radiologist Can Read Images and Medical Records. Read about new x-ray technology in Health Attitude.