Engaging clinicians, from whichever health setting or discipline, whether they are doctors, nurses or allied health professionals, is increasingly acknowledged to be an essential precondition for the success of quality improvement initiatives. This is because clinicians are at the front line of health care where service users’ health needs are addressed and healthcare is delivered.

At our London Global Gathering on May 2nd we have invited industry experts to support ideas to the point of creating clinical impact in healthcare.

Precision Medicine, Precision Robots - ‘AI Can Speed Up Precision Medicine’

Yes, but what about the challenges faced by clinicians in keeping up with genetic discoveries and technology driven therapies? We need to provide them with the tools that can be used in a more individualized approach to patients. Some of those sharing insight at the event will be the following

Joanne Hackett, Chief Commercial Officer at Genomics England part of the NHS is a keynote speaker. Genomics England have reached the halfway milestone of the 100,000 Genomes Project and aims to have sequences of 100,000 genomes by the end of 2018.

"We have seen the ability of AI to assist the healthcare provider to arrive at a correct assessment of a patient’s status. Artificial intelligence will not supplant human physicians, rather assist healthcare providers to be more efficient and accurate." - Joanne Hackett

Dr. Anne T. Bruinvels, Founder Px Healthcare - The Patient Experience Company - Optimising Oncology Outcomes. Px HealthCare develops mobile health solutions for people with chronic diseases providing them with individualised, practical support as well as self-reporting tools. This is likely to improve the dialogue between the patient and the treating clinician and the patient-reported data enables the doctor to adjust the treatment more effectively when necessary

Dr Junaid Bajwa, Executive Director of Healthcare Services, Merck will share his perspective on how precision medicine can be delivered today, and what we need to do in the near future to enable the right “adoption” environment for other forms of precision medicine.

What Will Healthcare Look Like Once Smart Speakers Are Everywhere?

Chatbots, A.I. supported messaging apps or voice controlled bots are forecasted to replace simple messaging apps soon. In healthcare, they could help solve easily diagnosable health concerns or support patient management, e.g. general organizational issues. But are they taking the health industry into the 21st Century or dehumanizing healthcare? We asked three industry experts to share their views.

“The most fascinating aspect of chatbots is not their functionality which is ever increasing, but the question of accountability of their algorithms. Chatbots are likely to become ubiquitous quickly. Less clear is what this means for our ability to assess, scrutinise and control the societal impacts and what this means for our civic institutions” - Axel Heitmueller, Managing Director, Imperial College Health Partners

"All too often, we are seduced by the bright and shiny, pursuing what a trendy technology can do instead of what problems to solve. Whether it is AI chatbots or blockchain data, technologies are just tools, and therefore, their effective applications in healthcare must be in context of integrated solutions that address real problems for our patients and the clinicians who take care of them" - Dr Lynda Chin, Executive Director REDI Platform, The University of Texas System

"Chatbots can help with simple repetitive tasks such as appointment booking, and citizens expect this.More complex tasks need accurate well coded data, with a safety within the system to identify when the output is off the normal tangent, I’m not entirely sure we are there yet." - Indra Joshi, Digital Health & AI Clinical Lead, NHS England

Innovation Management - Tokenistic or Genuine?

There are so many clinicians in the digital leadership business today which emphasises the importance of the role in leading innovation in healthcare, not as a nice to have but as an intrinsic element to achieving success. Imperial College Health Partners strives for innovative creations and innovative solutions to challenges that effect all healthcare services across the globe.

Professor Lord Ara Darzi is the Chairman of Surgery at Imperial College London and the Institute for Global Health Innovation. In a fireside chat with Axel Heitmueller they will discuss the current appetite for health innovation, the many challenges facing the health care system, what role does policy play and quality for clinicians.

Deep Learning For Drug Discovery - How Are Industry Giants Using It?

Discovering a new drug is a long, expensive and often haphazard process. Thousands of compounds are subject to a progressive series of tests, and only one might turn out to be a viable drug. Any tool which can speed up just one of these steps in this long multi-step process would have big implications down the entire chain. This is why so many AI companies have committed their efforts to healthcare to help the process.

Google's Deepmind wants to solve the problem of patient deterioration in hospitals. If they can teach AI to figure out why patients deteriorate then machines can, theoretically, take over monitoring duties. And it’s absolutely feasible for AI to continuously watch every patient all the time — computers don’t take breaks or get tired. Tony Corkett will take the stage to explain Deepmind's vision for the future of AI in healthcare.

Company Highlights

We will also hear from companies leading the way in voice assist devices. Ada, describes itself as a “personal health companion and telemedicine app” and via a conversational interface is designed to help you work out what symptoms you have and offer you information on what might be the cause. If needed, it then offers you a follow up remote consultation with a real doctor over text. Sense.ly Adam Odessky describes their platform as “A cross between Whatsapp and Siri that captures all the important signals about a person’s health.” On the patient side, Sense.ly asks users to tell a nurse avatar how they’re doing with 5-minute “check ins” either once a day, or every few days, on their smartphones. Patients can simply talk to the app, no typing required.