Will Smart Healthcare Unfold in Earnest in 2017?
As big data and artificial intelligence technologies advance, learning and accuracy are improving.

The smart healthcare industry, featuring personalized healthcare services utilizing data, is expected to expand significantly next year.

The smart healthcare industry is expected to enter into a relationship of both complementarity and competition with traditional medical information platforms as data generated from increasingly diverse devices grows. Furthermore, personalized solutions utilizing big data and artificial intelligence technologies, along with standardization and ensuring reliability, are anticipated to be key issues.

First, amidst the development of various wearable smart devices in addition to smartphone apps, Canada's OMsignal has developed a smart shirt equipped with a heart rate sensor, and Google is developing a smart lens that measures blood glucose levels in tears. In Korea, ETRI has developed a bio-shirt that monitors biosignals such as electrocardiograms, respiration, and exercise levels.

▲ OMsignal's OMbra provides a comfortable fit while monitoring various health information, including the user's heart rate. (From the OMsignal blog)

Smart healthcare is situated at the intersection where healthcare and AI (artificial intelligence) meet. Personalized data utilizing AI and big data is being provided because the increasing volume of personalized medical information is driving growing interest from both governments and companies in utilizing big data and creating added value. For example, the United States provides the National Institutes of Health's Pillbox service, while Taiwan provides anonymized personal health information to research institutions. GE's e-Health solution and IBM Watson are representative solutions.

As these are devices that come into contact with the body, it is necessary to ensure reliability and standardization. Since they are electronic products, there are doubts regarding their impact on the human body and the accuracy of measured data, requiring verification. Recognizing the need for testing and certification of wearable smart devices, the Korean Agency for Technology and Standards has developed a strategic roadmap.

It appears that smart healthcare cannot avoid not only complementary functions with traditional medical information platforms but also some competition. As traditional medical information systems and the latest smart healthcare platforms evolve in a mutually competitive and complementary manner, Microsoft (MS) in the United States utilizes HealthVault to provide PHR-based personalized healthcare services, offering a foundation for deriving accurate diagnoses and treatment methods for individual patients.

Evolving through AI analysis of individual genetic information

As smart healthcare evolves, personalized cancer treatments are being developed through AI analysis of individual genetic information. Cancer-causing cells are identified from personal DNA analysis of blood samples, and treatment is achieved by reprogramming these cancer cells into healthy ones using molecular computing. For example, actress Angelina Jolie is famous for having undergone a mastectomy and ovarian removal after early detection of a genetic defect predicted an 87% probability of breast cancer and a 50% probability of ovarian cancer. Microsoft predicts that cancer control technology based on genetic analysis and AI programming will become mainstream within five years.

Smart healthcare, which improves the accuracy of disease diagnosis by learning from vast medical records, is also expected to play a role in preventive health management by preventing diseases such as diabetes based on DNA and wearable information.