Health care

Prof. Amy Finkelstein speaks with Stephen Dubner of Freakonomics Radio about why insurance markets are broken, how they can be fixed, and her new book, “Risky Business.” Finkelstein explains that “one thing I hadn’t realized ‘til I started working in economics is there’s another type of market frailty that’s really important, that’s the subject of a lot of government policy, but that most people just don’t seem to be as aware of. And that’s the problem of selection. And it’s front and center in insurance markets.”

Researchers at MIT developed a system that uses artificial intelligence to help predict future risk of developing breast cancer, reports Poppy Harlow for CNN. What this work does “is identifies risk. It can tell a woman that you’re at high risk for developing breast cancer before you develop breast cancer,” says Larry Norton, medical director of the Lauder Breast Center at the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center.

Fast Company reporter Amelia Hemphill spotlights the work of Alicia Chong Rodriguez SM ’17, SM ’18, and her startup Bloomer Tech, which is “dedicated to transforming women’s underwear into a healthcare device.” “Our big goal is to generate digital biomarkers,” says Chong Rodriguez. “Digital biomarkers work more like a video, so it will definitely allow a more personalized care from the physician to their patient.”

Writing for Fortune, Prof. Elazer R. Edelman and Mike Mussallem of Edwards Lifesciences write that the backlog of deferred medical treatments caused by the Covid-19 pandemic and resulting long-term health consequences could impact public health for years. Edelman and Mussallem emphasize that “it is incumbent upon us to identify timely real-world evidence to elucidate the effects of policy changes so they can be adaptive and agile enough to provide access to critical interventions and procedures.”

An ingestible, pill-shaped sensor module, which can pinpoint its location as it moves through the body, has been developed by researchers at MIT and Caltech, reports Andrew Paul for Popular Science. This method “could one day offer an effective means to assess issues like constipation, gastroesophageal reflux disease, and gastroparesis,” writes Paul.

A new smart pill the size of a quarter, developed by a team of researchers from MIT, Caltech and NYU, could one day help doctors more easily identify issues in a patient’s digestive tract. “Such a device could offer an alternative to more invasive procedures in humans, such as endoscopy, that are currently used to diagnose motility disorders,” writes Nina Massey for The Independent.

Prof. Gio Traverso and his colleagues at Caltech and NYU have developed a smart ingestible sensor that may offer a less invasive way to diagnose gastrointestinal disorders. “The hope is the device will allow doctors, armed with the exact location of a GI tract disruption, to better target care — and give patients a diagnostic option they can use at home,” reports Lizzy Lawler for STAT.

Researchers from MIT and Caltech have developed a pill-shaped ingestible sensor that can be monitored as it moves through the GI tract, allowing doctors to more easily diagnose gastrointestinal disorders, reports Brian Heater for TechCrunch. “The ability to characterize motility without the need for radiation, or more invasive placement of devices, I think will lower the barrier for people to be evaluated,” says Prof. Giovanni Traverso.

Researchers at MIT and Massachusetts General Hospital have developed “Sybil” – an artificial intelligence tool that can predict the risk of a patient developing lung cancer within six years, reports Mallika Marshall for CBS Boston. 

MIT researchers have developed a new AI tool called Sybil that could help predict whether a patient will get lung cancer up to six years in advance, reports Pranshu Verma for The Washington Post.  “Much of the technology involves analyzing large troves of medical scans, data sets or images, then feeding them into complex artificial intelligence software,” Verma explains. “From there, computers are trained to spot images of tumors or other abnormalities.”

National Geographic reporter Maya Wei-Haas explores how the ancient art of origami is being applied to fields such a robotics, medicine and space exploration. Wei-Haas notes that Prof. Daniela Rus and her team developed a robot that can fold to fit inside a pill capsule, while Prof. Erik Demaine has designed complex, curving fold patterns. “You get these really impressive 3D forms with very simple creasing,” says Demaine.

Natalia Rodriguez ’09 speaks with Diverse Issues in Higher Education reporter Pearl Stewart about her work as a biomedical engineer focused on community healthcare. “I work to bring health technologies from the lab to the people, and I also work to bring the needs, the priorities and the strengths of communities back to engineers so they know who they’re designing for,” Rodriguez explains. 

A review led Prof. Marzyeh Ghassemi has found that a major issue in health-related machine learning models “is the relative scarcity of publicly available data sets in medicine,” reports Emily Sohn for Nature.

A study by Prof. Amy Finkelstein finds that physicians and their families are less likely to comply with medication guidelines, reports Dennis Thompson for HealthDay. The researchers found that “people tend to adhere to medication guidelines about 54% of the time, while doctors and their families lag about 4 percentage points behind that.”

Principal research scientist Leo Anthony Celi speaks with Associated Press reporter Maddie Burakoff about how pulse oximeters can provide inaccurate readings in patients of color. Celi highlights how oxygen levels can also be measured by drawing blood out of an artery in the wrist, the “gold standard” for accuracy, but a method that is a a bit trickier and more painful.