Q: Artificial intelligence (AI) techniques have sent vast waves across healthcare, even fueling an active discussion of whether AI doctors will eventually replace human physicians in the future. Do you believe that human physicians will be replaced by machines in the foreseeable future? What are your thoughts?

A: Human physicians will certainly not be replaced by machine learning or AI technologies.

Q: Patient healthcare data aggregation and analysis is seen as both the panacea for tremendous breakthroughs in precision medicine and as one of its biggest challenges. Are both true and how so?

A: Yes, both are true. Precision medicine in healthcare practices relies on real-time access to patient data to inform clinical decision making.

Q: Tell us more about your organization/company. What patient population are you serving and which services are you specializing in?

A: Natera offers a host of proprietary genetic testing services to inform physicians who care for pregnant women, researchers in cancer, including biopharmaceutical companies, and genetic laboratories through its cloud-based software platform.

Q: What need is Battelle addressing?

A: Battelle is building classic and artificial intelligence (AI)-based tools to rapidly screen DNA sequences for pathogenic functions. Function-based screening targets the pathogenic processes or virulence factors associated with a sequence. This approach provides advantages over simply matching to functionally uninformative genome segments, enabling pathogen identification on the basis of pathogenicity rather than requiring an exact sequence match to a known pathogen.

Q: Artificial intelligence (AI) techniques have sent vast waves across healthcare, even fueling an active discussion of whether AI doctors will eventually replace human physicians in the future. Do you believe that human physicians will be replaced by machines in the foreseeable future?

A: No, I believe that human expertise and clinical judgement are essential for foreseeable future and not replaceable by AI.

Q: What products and services do Horizon Discovery offer to address the needs of the precision medicine research community?

A: Data from genomic screens are enabling the right drug to be prescribed to the right person at the right time. This is the essence of personalized medicine and Horizon Discovery is at the forefront of driving forward this powerful new model.

Q: Artificial intelligence (AI) techniques have sent vast waves across healthcare, even fueling an active discussion of whether AI doctors will eventually replace human physicians in the future. Do you believe that human physicians will be replaced by machines in the foreseeable future? What are your thoughts?

A: I believe that applying AI technologies in healthcare will make physicians more valuable, and will make their careers more enjoyable and sustainable.

Q: What need is Panaceutics addressing?

A: One of the key barriers to making precision/personalized wellness and healthcare products is the contradictory goal of manufacturing individualized products on a large scale. Meeting demand for personalized products can be expensive and logistically challenging.

Q: Genomic medicine is entering more hospitals and bringing with it non-invasive technology that can be used to better target and treat diseases. What are some key milestones that contributed to this trend?

A: The milestones in my mind include the first FDA clearance of Next Gen Sequencing instrument, MiSeqDx in 2013, this opened a new door for clinical utilization of parallel gene alteration detection in clinical setting.