The Computational Medicine Podcast: Recent Episodes
Dr Alex Davidson
The future is computational. Interviews with clinicians, academics and business leaders involved in computational healthcare work. | Get in touch: hi@alexdavidson.me
Dr Anders Sandberg is a senior research fellow at the Future of Humanity Institute at the University of Oxford. He holds a PhD in computational neuroscience from Stockholm University. His work is wide ranging, including the societal and ethical issues surrounding human enhancement and new technology, as well as assessing the capabilities and underlying science of future technologies. His research includes work on cognitive enhancement and technical roadmaps on whole brain emulation, neuroethics, and global catastrophic risks.
We discussed the roadmap to whole brain emulation, defining consciousness, the ethical and cultural implications of whole brain emulation, attitudes towards cryonics and death and lots more.
You can find Dr Anderes Sanberg at:
Twitter: @anderssandberg
Website: www.fhi.ox.ac.uk/team/anders-sandberg/
You can find me at:
Twitter: @Dr_AlexDavidson
Website: www.alexdavidson.me
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Fin Moorhouse is a researcher at Longview Philanthropy. Before that, he was a Research Scholar and assistant to Toby Ord at Oxford University’s Future of Humanity Institute. He co-hosts a podcast called Hear This Idea, about about ideas for solving important problems, and the people working on them ranging form AI safety, Biorisk to global development. He writes about effective altruism, existential risk, and ways to improve the (longterm) future on his writing page.
We discussed his work an lessons from his podcast guests, his thoughts on Effective Altruism. Other key insights from podcasting. How it might be worth investing in clean air for our health and AI Safety.
He also :
- Is a fellow on this ‘Roots of Progress’ writing fellowship
- Continues to informally work with (and learn from) Toby Ord
- Thinks about some EA project ideas I’d like to help make happen
- Researched space governance as an EA cause area (and now advise a couple groups which were since established)
- Worked on a policy brief about a UN Declaration on Future Generations
- Helped set up a contest to support EA criticism
You can find Fin at:
Twitter: @finmoorhouse
Website: https: www.finmoorhouse.com
You can find me at:
Twitter: @Dr_AlexDavidson
Website: www.alexdavidson.me
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Jess Morley who is a PhD student at the Oxford Internet Institute at Oxford University. Her work focuses on understanding the ethical, philosophical and practical ramifications of the increasing use of technology in healthcare. She was The lead tech advisor for data-driven technology at UK Department of Health and Social Care. She was a contributor towards the Goldachre review which looked at the efficient and safe use of health data for research and analysis and how this can benefit patients and the healthcare sector, and was originally commissioned by the Secretary of State for Health and Care in February 2021. It was published on gov.uk in April 2022. We discussed her current work, what are the key factors that make a medical AI paper effective and where healthcare data will be going in the future.
You can find Jess Morley at:
Twitter: @jessRmorley
Website: https: www.healthdatanerd.org
You can find me at:
Twitter: @Dr_AlexDavidson
Website: www.alexdavidson.me
Support the show
Dr James Zou is an Assistant Professor of Biomedical Data Science and Computer Science at Stanford University. He works on making machine learning more reliable, human-compatible and statistically rigorous. He received his Ph.D from Harvard in 2014, and was at one time a member of Microsoft Research, a Gates Scholar at Cambridge and a Simons fellow at U.C. Berkeley.
He joined Stanford in 2016 and his research is supported by the Sloan Fellowship and the Google and Tencent AI awards.
He recently published a very high quality paper looking at using EchoNet, an AI model to help interpret echocardiogram scans that was published in Nature medicine. It showed that AI saved clinician time and had as good scan interpretation as echocardiogram sonographers. One of the key factors that made this paper so effective was the fact that it was randomized , blinded and prospective. Factors that often are not present in medical papers but are crucial to make the evidence of what they show robust. We discussed his work on EchoNet and similar projects, what factors he considers are important in making effective medical AI papers and where he sees these models being deployed in the future.
You can find Dr James Zou at:
Twitter: @james_y_zou
Website: https: www.james-zou.com
You can find me at:
Twitter: @Dr_AlexDavidson
Website: www.alexdavidson.me
Support the show
Dr. Adam Bataine is co-Founder of Span Health, a health coaching company driven by data to improve longevity. The company's primary goal was to enhance human performance by assisting members in improving their sleep, nutrition, and exercise routines through scientifically based experiments. In 2022, Span Health was acquired by Eight Sleep for an undisclosed sum.
What makes Adam particularly intriguing is his role as a pioneer in the field of Medicine. While Longevity is not typically recognized as a specialized area in the UK, Adam has carved out his own unique niche. Enhancing people's longevity and healthspan requires not only a comprehensive understanding of human physiology but also a deep comprehension of behavioral psychology. Adam focuses on motivating individuals to take actions today that their future selves will be grateful for.
In other words, instead of merely addressing problems as they arise, doctors like Adam strive to prevent or at least delay those problems from occurring in the first place. During our conversation, we delve into Adam's journey and his approach to establishing Span Health. We also explore his methods for optimizing longevity and touch upon some of the personal experiments he has conducted. I hope you find this discussion enjoyable.
You can find Adam at:
Twitter: @DrAdamBat
Website: https://www.numenor.health/
You can find me at:
Twitter: @Dr_AlexDavidson
Website: www.alexdavidson.me
Support the show
Vivek Natarajan is an AI researcher at Google Health working to accelerate biomedical AI’s translation from code to clinic and scale world-class healthcare to everyone. In this episode we spoke about about his work in helping to build MedPalm 1 and 2. The two best general medical machine Learning models right now are GPT4 and MedPalm 2 built by Google with both scoring >85% on the USMLE and similar other medical exams. Vivek tells us how his team at Googlehealth built MedPalm 1 and 2 and where he sees similar models being deployed in medicine in the near future.
You can find Vivek Natarajan at:
Twitter: @vivnat
Website: natviv.me
You can find me at:
Twitter: @Dr_AlexDavidson
Website: www.alexdavidson.me
Dr Hugh Harvey is managing director at Hardian Health, a healthcare consultancy that provides clinical, research and medical affairs support to AI or healthtech products. After studying medicine at Imperial College London, he trained and worked as a consultant radiologist in the NHS. He then moved to Babylon Health as lead for Regulatory Affairs in Clinical Artificial Intelligence. He also was the editor for Nature Digital. We discussed regulation of AI as a medical device, where he sees AI being deployed in medicine effectively in the next few years and the main pitfalls for companies and public bodies trying to deploy AI in medicine. This was a great conversion and really got to the core of what to expect from these new technologies. AI is going to revolutionise medicine but safeguarding it’s deployment to ensure it is done safely is as important as developing the technology.
Dr Hugh Harvey Twitter: @DrHughHarvey
You can find me:
Twitter: @Dr_AlexDavidson
Website: www.alexdavidson.me
Dr Phillip Pratt is cofounder of Medical iSight, a company that brings augmented reality into the operating theatre. He has a PhD in Neural Systems Engineering from Imperial College London and after a career as a quantitative analyst he was appointed as a research Fellow at the Hamlyn Centre for Robotic Surgery.
We discussed the technology behind this tool and future implementations it may have to improve surgery in the future.
You can find Dr Philip Pratt at:
Twitter: @philipjpratt
Medical iSight: https://www.medicalisight.com/
You can find me at:
Twitter: @Dr_AlexDavidson
Website: www.alexdavidson.me
Dr Patrick Walters is chief data officer at Relay Therapeutics, a company that uses computational techniques to transform the drug discovery process.
Since being founded in 2016, the company IPOs in 2020, and is currently valued at $2 billion. And we discussed the computational models that relay uses in the work and how they pair these with wet lab experiments to improve the speed and accuracy of drug discovery.
Dr Patrick Walters Twiter: @wpwalters
Relay Therapeutics Twitter: @Relay_Tx
You can find me:
Twitter: @Dr_AlexDavidson
Website: www.alexdavidson.me
Professor Pearse Keane works at the forefront of the use of machine learning in ophthalmology. He is a consultant Ophthalmologist at the Moorefield’s Eye Hospital in London, the world’s oldest eye hospital. He also is a professor of medical artificial intelligence at University College London. His research team works top consistently publishes their work in top impact factor journals and has previously collaborated with Deepmind on the analysis of retinal scans.
We discuss his career path, the nuisances and challenges of applying machine learning in medicine and where he sees this field going in the future.
You can find me on Twitter @Dr_AlexDavidson or my website www.alexdavidson.me
Dr Chris Lovejoy studied medicine at Cambridge, after 2 years of medical training he undertook the Machine Learning and Computational Statistics masters at UCL. After working as a Machine Learning researcher, he now has co founded a startup called Billions health. Along the way he picked up an MBA as well.
We spoke about his career path, advice for other medics who have an interest in computational work and the best applications of the most common machine learning algorithms.
website: www.chrislovejoy.me
twitter: @ChrisLovejoy_
Dr Imran Mahmud studied medicine at Oxford followed by a public health masters at Harvard. He left working in the NHS to join McKinsey as a consultant. Following this, he co-founded Nye Health, a telemedicine company that has since pivoted towards providing data driven services for medical research. We spoke about the challenges in his career path, key lessons he has learnt along the way and his core values both in and out of work.
website: https://www.imranmahmud.com/
twitter: @ImranMahmudMD
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Get in touch: hi@alexdavidson.me
Dr Mustafa Sultan is a F1 doctor working in Manchester, while he was a medical student he started the Big Picture Medicine podcast and has since interviewed a long list of impressive guests including various medical start-up founders, and high achievers in academics and medicine.
He also started explainthispaper, a website that summarises AI healthcare papers for doctors that has received funding from Santander and Newcastle university.
We discuss lessons he has learnt from his podcast guests and how AI will be implemented in healthcare in the next few years.
Twitter: @MustafaSultan
Website: www.Musty.io / https://explainthispaper.com/
Dr Matthew Williams is a Consultant Oncologist at Imperial College Healthcare Trust. He aso leads the Computational Oncology group at Imperial College London. His academic work focuses on mathematical and computational approaches to clinical problems.
He started the “Coding for medics” teaching course that taught undergraduate medical students the fundamentals of coding and was featured in the BBC documentary “Hospital” that narrates the journeys of patients suffering from medical conditions.
We spoke about his work, how he utilises computational techniques for his research and we discussed advice for medical students looking to improve their computational skills.
Academic website: https://www.imperial.ac.uk/people/matthew.williams
Blog: https://blogs.imperial.ac.uk/componc/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/matthwilliams?lang=en