Slashdot Mirror
Amazon Starts Selling Software To Mine Patient Health Records (wsj.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Wall Street Journal: Amazon is starting to sell software to mine patient medical records (Warning: source paywalled; alternative source) for information that doctors and hospitals could use to improve treatment and cut costs, the latest move by a big technology company into the health care industry. The software can read digitized patient records and other clinical notes, analyze them and pluck out key data points, Amazon says. The company is expected to announce the launch Tuesday. Amazon Web Services, the company's cloud-computing division, has been selling such text-analysis software to companies outside medicine for use in areas such as travel booking, customer support and supply-chain management. The technology's health-care application is the newest effort by Amazon to tap into the lucrative market.
Amazon officials say the company's software developers trained the system using a process known as deep learning to recognize all the ways a doctor might record notes. "We're able to completely, automatically look inside medical language and identify patient details," including diagnoses, treatments, dosage and strengths, "with incredibly high accuracy," said Matt Wood, general manager of artificial intelligence at Amazon Web Services. During testing, the software performed on par or better than other published efforts, and can extract data on patients' diseases, prescriptions, lab orders and procedures, said Taha Kass-Hout, a senior leader with Amazon's health-care and artificial intelligence efforts. The project is called Amazon Comprehend Medical, which "allows developers to process unstructured medical text and identify information such as patient diagnosis, treatments, dosages, symptoms and signs, and more," according to a blog post. Dr. Kass-Hout says Amazon Web Services won't see the data processed by its algorithms, "which will be encrypted and unlocked by customers who have the key," reports WSJ.
Amazon officials say the company's software developers trained the system using a process known as deep learning to recognize all the ways a doctor might record notes. "We're able to completely, automatically look inside medical language and identify patient details," including diagnoses, treatments, dosage and strengths, "with incredibly high accuracy," said Matt Wood, general manager of artificial intelligence at Amazon Web Services. During testing, the software performed on par or better than other published efforts, and can extract data on patients' diseases, prescriptions, lab orders and procedures, said Taha Kass-Hout, a senior leader with Amazon's health-care and artificial intelligence efforts. The project is called Amazon Comprehend Medical, which "allows developers to process unstructured medical text and identify information such as patient diagnosis, treatments, dosages, symptoms and signs, and more," according to a blog post. Dr. Kass-Hout says Amazon Web Services won't see the data processed by its algorithms, "which will be encrypted and unlocked by customers who have the key," reports WSJ.
what about hippa and other laws? must they give the key to the patient?
also will Amazon make it so that the patient can key with out needing to buy the software as under the law providers cannot charge a fee for searching for or retrieving your information,
Don't be a dick. He means HIPAA, and you know it.
Alas for you it'll only tell you of the idiots who tell their doctor that they "drink, smoke, do drugs, and have the diabetis brought on from eating all that junk food"
Help Brendan pay off his student loans
While we're at it let's exclude all the people who get skin cancer because they worked outside and never used sunblock. Let's exclude all the women with breast cancer who didn't get regular mammographies. Let's exclude all the birth defects that weren't aborted in early pregnancy, let's exclude all the people involved in motor vehicle accidents because they are all preventable, let's exclude all workplace injuries for not following correct safety procedures, let's exclude...
I mean, why stop just at your list? You want to find reasons to "kick idiots out", there are plenty of reasons to kick everyone out. Hey let's go back to medieval thinking: if you get sick it's your fault, you must have done something to deserve it/make god angry/let the evil spirits in.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
Boomers are idiots who don't know and thus don't care how idiotic they've become. The sooner their short sighted idiocy can be rendered incapable of influencing governmental regulatory policy regarding the safety and welfare of the country they are destroying, the better.
This is true in many different areas, and I speak as a Boomer.
I can speak as a late boomer.
Good luck millennials and others - your time in the seat of blame will arrive sooner than you think. And don't think it won't happen.
It's pretty interesting stuff. I've worked hard my whole life, saved a lot of money, invested wisely, and don't owe anyone a penny. Yet I am the problem.
But here's the real fun part - there were boomers in my day who other than separated by time sounded just like the laments of millennials now - the only difference was that we were worried about getting drafted and shot up, and no one was going to retire and no point saving because inflation was going to render our money worthless.
And the whiners in my day's hate and blame target? "The Greatest Generation".
As my old man told me when I was 16... "Hurry up and move out of the house while you still know everything".
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
As 60 yr old, I'm pretty much 100% in agreement with your post. The one thing I think our generation was truly guilty of was creating a generation of kids who got participation awards instead of teaching them to compete. We now have "helicopter parents" who can't let their kids be kids and learn to take care of themselves.
Just another day in Paradise
FWIW, back when I was a kid (60s/70s) we used to actually put on baby oil to try and brown up better. I don't think I ever heard about skin cancer until the 80s.
Just another day in Paradise