AI, Wearable Tech Helping Treat Women's Health Issues

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00:00You set up this lab, what, eight years ago. Tell us what it's all about and the work you're doing.

00:05Thank you so much, first of all, summarizing my work very elegantly. I really appreciate it and

00:11great to be with you today. And my work at the Media Lab underlines conformable, malleable,

00:20flexible and stretchable technologies that you can simply laminate on any part of your body,

00:26all the way from breasts to skin, which is the largest organ, or even implant in deeper regions

00:34in your body, such as brain. And we need to do that because imagine we live in an ocean of physical

00:42patterns, heart rates, respiration, neuronal activity, and all this information, biological

00:50language that I call contains information inside. And we need to create technologies which can have

00:58intimate integration with your body part to extract this biological language and simply like a Google

01:05translation, translate the biological language into electrical language so that we can create

01:12a smart interface between individuals as well as medical doctors who can do interventions in a smart

01:21and personalized way. When you talk about interventions, what we're talking about is essentially helping

01:26people cure disease or live longer, healthier, happier lives. But specifically, the technology that

01:33you're working on, what does it address? Like, what is the hope that it solves?

01:37Great question. First of all, this project, which is a conformable ultrasound technology

01:45to empower women to enable early breast cancer detection is a multi-year project. It's not we do it like

01:54within a night or so. So I would like to emphasize the dedication, the efforts that we all put together

02:00together with a diverse team of students, collaborators, and so on. And this technology is a technology which can be a

02:09part of your personal bra, and you can wear it. And while drinking your coffee, within subseconds, it can tell you

02:18any anomaly with pinpoint accuracy, and with the coordination. And you may ask why this is important. It is important

02:28because half of the population, which is woman population, has a long lasting problem that needs to be addressed,

02:35which is breast cancer. And current standard care of screening is mammography. And if Carolyn experienced this,

02:45it's a very painful technology. It's not fun. It's lousy. I'm just going to put it out there.

02:49Exactly. It smashed a very personal part of yourself. And plus, it doesn't work perfectly on me

02:57because I have a high breast density. I am 40 years old. So I need to have an adjunct technology,

03:04which is ultrasonography. And majority of the high risk woman patients, like around 40 percentile of

03:13this woman, develop breast cancer in between two mammographies, which is called interval cancer.

03:19It's the most aggressive phenotype. And but by the time you are diagnosed, your survival rate

03:28decreases to 22 percentile. So we say, imagine a world in which a technology can enable you to check

03:37your breast tissue regularly because it is safe and non-radiative. And you can use it simply at home.

03:45And within, again, subseconds, you can check the anomalies. And by collecting a lot of data and also

03:51co-integration of the AI, open new paths by using lots of data, we can even estimate what will happen

03:59to your anomaly or under medication, throughout the medication, how your breast cyst or tumor is

04:08changing over time. So we can give all this information on time and very effectively and safe.

04:16And so we can increase the survival rate up to 98 percentile, which is amazing, which is amazing.

04:22It's unbelievable. Dr. Dagderan. So is this being used? Is it in test trials? Because it sounds like

04:29so logical. And I'm just curious, though, or is it expensive if we all have one of these devices?

04:33So that's where the problem is. Why aren't we doing this? And I know you've recently launched a

04:38women's health program, WHX. So you you're looking at this and what can be done to kind of close some

04:45of the gaps that are out there between men and women. So something like this, are we using it or is

04:50it just in a test phase? And how soon do we get kind of move towards this kind of diagnosing and really

04:56being on top of health care, women's or other? Yeah, again, amazing question. The current situation

05:04with our technology, we are conducting our intensive human trials here at MIT, as well as at MGH, where our

05:12medical collaborators are. And we are getting very promising results. And we publish multiple papers and

05:19patents. And of course, the later on, one of the main goals of WHX that we launched newly at MIT Media Lab is

05:29to do translation, translational aspect of the work. Of course, as a researcher writing a paper, raising new

05:36generation of students and the patents, writing the patents are great. And but it's not enough. So we really

05:42want this technology to be real in the market and used by the people who are in need. And

05:48with our best estimation, of course, with the substantial financial support to run our experiments

05:56and do the trials, we hope this technology will be available less than four to five years.

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