Curing cancer, preventing crime

NEWARK, California - Silicon Valley is an amazing place. It is also the most important place on Earth so far as the future is concerned. How our future generations will live their lives has probably already been determined by some of the hottest tech wizards working in an ultra modern tech campus or a garage in the valley.

I have been reading up on the latest innovations being worked on as I prepared to visit my kids here. I also had a good conversation with Luis Pineda, the current country manager of IBM Philippines. Pineda, a Filipino who grew up in the US, has been assigned in the technology side of IBM and was eager to share his expertise on how to make technology work for our country.

IBM’s Watson is already helping our scientists crunch voluminous data to advance our capability to meet challenges in agriculture and disaster preparedness. Pineda’s predecessor, Mariels Almeda Winhoffer, also a Pinoy, arranged for the donation of an IBM supercomputer to the DOST. It is now giving our scientists the computing power to advance their research programs.

Pineda was excited about a new IBM service when we had our conversation three weeks ago. This involves using IBM’s Watson supercomputer to help doctors come up with specially tailored potential treatment approaches for their cancer patients. The IBM supercomputer has the ability to analyze the meaning and context of clinical studies and assimilate key patient information written in plain English to help an attending oncologist determine a treatment pathway.

Watson goes through an impressive body of information from over 290 medical journals, 200 textbooks and some 12 million pages of text, ranks identified treatment options and provides links to supporting evidence for each option to help oncologists consider treatment options for their patient. Watson combines attributes from a patient’s file with clinical expertise and all relevant gathered data to develop a potential treatment plan.

Since individual doctors cannot possibly read through all relevant studies out there, Watson’s help to make informed treatment decisions which can save lives and protect patients from needless or harmful treatment.  Some of the major tertiary hospitals in Metro Manila are reported to be considering taking the service.

Since the big story back home has to do with the police and its approach to crime and punishment, I read up on how computers are being harnessed to keep peace and order in our communities. They are apparently making great strides in this area.

There is an article in Quantumrun.com that talks about predicting crimes before they happen. Big Data Analytics is now being used in a big way to prevent and solve crimes. The Boston Marathon bombing is one example. They used visual data from CCTV cameras in the affected area and combined with data they already have in various government data bases, they were able to make a positive ID of the perpetrators in record time.

Existing and emerging technologies can be expected to make everyday life for peaceful citizens safer and make life for criminals more difficult. Like it or not so much data is now being gathered and stored by governments about us that enables them to come up with a personality profile of people. That data hoard comes in handy in crime prevention and solution.

For instance, police here are monitoring social media, analyzing billions of public posts made each day. They are looking for patterns and context within key words people use.

“Consider this: governments collect visual data on you through CCTV cameras. They collect speech data on you by recording your phone conversations. They collect written data from your texts and your emails. Relationship data from your social networks and phone call logs. Interest data from the websites you visit and the images you share online. Location data from the cell phone you carry in your pocket. The list goes on...

“Future police supercomputers will crunch all this information to develop real time threat profiles of every citizen... Individuals whose metadata profile indicates they are a high risk to their community will be monitored and in some cases, proactively arrested.”

The Quantumrun.com article notes that Silicon Valley digital wizards are offering today’s police departments what they call “predictive analytics software” that crunches years of crime reports and statistics combined with real time variables such as weather, etc to give the police a head start on crime occurrence. A city map is generated by all these data to indicate probability and type of criminal activity likely to occur at any given time, in every part of the city.

I am not sure if the IBM Smart Cities program bought by Davao City’s Mayor Sara Duterte some years ago has this capability. It probably does. Cebu City Mayor Tommy Osmeña once told me he also has a system that enables him to know what is going on in every barangay. These may all seem Orwellian but if used to protect the general public, technology could be a big help in governing cities and keeping peaceful citizens safe.

The era of supercomputers and artificial intelligence is upon us. The newly formed DICT has the obligation to map out a national strategy that will enable us to harness appropriate technologies and not be left behind.

Boo Chanco’s e-mail address is [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter @boochanco