Technology: No longer aliens & robots

Recently, I talked to a sleep medicine specialist about the possibilities of AI-enabled technology for that patient population; the next I was talking to a diabetes company about the AI-enabled technology for those patients. 

I can’t open my inbox without multiple daily pitches on the latest AI technology. It’s all very heady stuff for this writer who, until recently, found my eyes glazing over every time I heard the word algorithm.  

But, the more people use it, the more it’s starting to make sense. Take Dr. Anuja Bandyopadhyay, who chairs the Artificial Intelligence in Sleep Medicine Committee for the American Association of Sleep Medicine. She told me that even four or five years ago, when it came to AI’s usefulness, skepticism reigned.  

No more. 

It’s no longer “aliens and robots,” she told me. 

“I think once people saw how this can be beneficial – it's helping me save time, save resources and improving access to care – then it became a natural solution to quite a few of our problems and that's how people start accepting it more,” she said. 

More exciting, from my point of view, is how technology empowers patients. Editor Liz spoke with Sam Rusk at EnsoData about that company’s recent partnership with Aeroflow Health (see page 1) to use its predictive tools to identify patients struggling with therapy. 

By looking at data that includes everything from leaks to AHI, its technology will help providers manage scare resources and, ultimately, improve patient adherence, he says. 

Even without the AI factor, technology has been growing by quantum leaps over the past few years.  Look at so-called “wearables.” While the U.S. Food and Drug Administration recently approved the Samsung Galaxy Watch to detect signs of OSA, consumers have been using wearable to track everything from steps (remember the pedometer) to heart rates to blood glucose numbers. 

Really, if you aren’t wearing some sort of wearable at this point, are you even alive? 

If ever there was a population that tracked data, it’s the diabetes patient. I recently upgraded to the Libre FreeStyle 3. The company has reduced packaging by about half and the latest generation sensor is also much smaller – both great things! 

But the biggest change (and if I would just read directions for once I would have known this) was that I no longer have to wave the reader (in this case, my phone) over the sensor to get a reading. After two days of confused waving of the phone over my arm, it dawned on me: Just press home and the number is … there. It might seem like a small thing, but it’s one less barrier on the road to better outcomes. 

Mind-boggling.