The Beat #003: The Early Bird Gets the Worm
Three stories of how technology can bolster early detection of disease
Hey Friends! We’ve got three stories this week about the use of health technology for early detection of disease. Therapeutic areas include:
Breast cancer
Schizophrenia and mood disorders
COVID-19
Enjoy!
Keep Calm and Mammogram
For many, COVID has not only cancelled social gatherings but also regular maintenance trips like that to the hair salon, nail salon, primary care physician, etc. But while your split ends and dangling cuticles aren’t life-threatening, skipping a cancer screening could have serious ramifications.
According to the American Society of Clinical Oncology, this year has resulted in a significant decline cancer screenings—in April, they were down by a staggering 89%.
Further, some cancer screenings saw a more precipitous drop than others, with breast cancer diagnoses experiencing the biggest plunge.
The early bird gets the worm: But with treating cancer, particularly breast cancer, early detection is key.
Regular screening mammograms help find cancers early, even before they are felt. And when cancer can be detected earlier, surgeries can be smaller, treatments more limited, and the chance recurrence lowered.
From the top rope: Enter Judit Giró Benet, a 23-year-old biomedical engineer whose research resulted in the invention of The Blue Box.
The Blue Box—which is, quite literally, a small blue box—is a biomedical device that takes a non-irradiating, non-invasive approach to breast cancer detection.
To use it, a urine sample is simply slid into a drawer of the device. The Blue Box’s chemical sensors scan it for targeted biomarkers, and the diagnostic information is sent via an app.
What’s next: While the device is still in the early stages of development and has yet to receive FDA approval, The Blue Box disrupts the traditional approach to breast cancer screening, encouraging women to take a more active role in their health and wellness.
Who Knew?
The content of your Facebook posts could not only be used for targeted ads but also to predict whether you have schizophrenia or a mood disorder.
According to a recent study published in Nature, people with schizophrenia used more perception words like “hear” and “feel” in their Facebook posts, while people with mood disorders were more likely to use words linked with biological processes like “blood” and “pain.”
A “linguistic footprint”: The research is part of an emerging field of psychiatrics that analyzes patients’ communications and behavior on social media. In turn, these data can be used for early detection, better diagnosis, and more prompt intervention for psychiatric care.
Researchers gathered more than 3.4 million Facebook messages and more than 140,000 images posted by 223 participants. The words were then fed into an analytics program called the Linguistic Inquiry Word Count.
The machine-learning algorithm, developed by computer scientists at IBM and Northwell Health’s Feinstein Institutes for Medical Research, correctly identified participants with mood disorders and schizophrenia spectrum disorders more than a year prior to their first psychiatric hospitalization.
Down the road: While Facebook data alone should never be used to make a clinical diagnosis (seems pretty self-explanatory), these types of early warning signs could be beneficial as a low burden screening tool for youth and those at risk of developing psychiatric disorders.
Hey Siri, Do I Have COVID?
It’s well established that wearable devices such as the Apple Watch, Fitbit, and Oura smart ring are great for fitness aficionados who want to track their fitness and performance.
However, recent research (from the University of California in San Francisco, Stanford University, and Scripps Research Translational Institute in San Diego, no less) suggests that biometric data from these devices may be useful for flagging some infections in people before they even feel sick.
Osmosis Jones at work: The studies center around a common principle that by establishing a baseline set of biometrics for every study participant — including temperature, heart rate, blood pressure, and sleep — researchers can detect deviations that are suggestive of illness.
More specifically, wearables can detect certain patterns of spikes and variability that are consistent signs of the body mounting an immune response. These patterns can manifest well before physical symptoms (like fever or loss of smell/taste) appear.
The chips are in: Oura, for its part, has already parlayed its research into big deals with professional sports leagues.
The company has partnerships with the NBA, WNBA, UFC, and NASCAR, all of whom are currently using the Oura platform to assess the risks of illness among players and staff.
The last step: However, the “virus-detection” feature on your wearable is not ready for primetime just yet. Further studies need to be conducted to refine these detection systems and, in particular, reduce the rate of false-positives.
And, there’s the problem that most people don’t have access to a $400 wearable.
Thanks for reading! As always, we conclude with our meme of the week.
