AI and Big Data enable better diagnosis, personalized treatment of eye diseases
“Exactly one year ago, we spoke about the fact that, in future, it will be possible to diagnose diabetes from the eye using automatic digital retinal screening, without the assistance of an ophthalmologist – 12 months on, MedUni Vienna is right in the middle of this digital revolution.” These were the words used by Ursula Schmidt-Erfurth, Head of MedUni Vienna’s Department of Ophthalmology and Optometrics to open today’s press conference about the ART-2018 Specialist Meeting on new developments in retinal therapy, which is to take place on 1 December. One of the latest developments is automatic diabetes screening, which was recently implemented at MedUni Vienna.
Patients flock to the Department to undergo this retinal examination to detect any diabetic changes. It takes just a few minutes and is completely non-invasive” Ursula Schmidt-Erfurth, Head of MedUni Vienna’s Department of Ophthalmology and Optometrics
Essentially this technique can detect all stages of diabetic retinal disease – high-resolution digital retinal images with two million pixels are taken and analyzed within seconds – but Big Data offers even more potential: nowadays it is already possible to diagnose an additional 50 other diseases in this way. Diabetes is just the start. And MedUni Vienna is among the global leaders in this digital revolution.
The Division of Cardiology led by Christian Hengstenberg within the Department of Medicine II is working on how digital retinal analysis can also be used in future for the early diagnosis of cardiovascular diseases.
“This AI medicine is ‘super human’,” emphasizes Schmidt-Erfurth. “The algorithms are quicker and more accurate. They can analyze things that an expert cannot detect with the naked eye.” And yet the commitment to Big Data and Artificial Intelligence is not a plea for medicine without doctors, which some experts predict for the not-to-distant future. “What we want are ‘super doctors’, who are able to use the high-tech findings to make the correct, individualized therapeutic decision for their patients, in the spirit of precision medicine, rather than leaving patients on their own.”
However, it is not only in the diagnosis of diseases that Artificial Intelligence and Big Data, plus virtual reality, provide better results.
