early diagnostics Archives - Amazing Health Advances

The AI Tech That Can Spot Serious Illness Before the Doctor

The AHA! Team — Wed, 05 Mar 2025 06:16:00 +0000

John Jeffay via Israel21c – Lavaa Health’s platform can identify disease and hard-to-diagnose illnesses at the earliest stage, allowing doctors to quickly draw up efficient treatment plans. Meet your GP’s new best friend – artificial intelligence (AI). Lavaa Health, an Israeli startup, watches over all patient data, ready to spot early signs of potential health issues, and uses its vast medical database to identify hard-to-diagnose or rare illnesses. It’s a virtual assistant that works in the background to offer help and alerts, but leaves the physician very much in the driver’s seat, from making the diagnosis to drawing up a treatment plan. The company was founded after a family tragedy. Adam Amitai, Lavaa’s CEO, watched helplessly as his 55-year-old mother-in-law succumbed to ovarian cancer. It had taken a year for the doctors to correctly diagnose her, by which time it was too late. She died eight months later. Amitai doesn’t blame the physicians and says they provided excellent care. But he realized they weren’t exploiting the power of AI to get quicker and more accurate insights. And so he interviewed 200 physicians in the United States, to fully understand how AI could best help them. And he drew on his seven years’ experience as an “offensive cyber officer” in the IDF – where a key challenge was sifting vital details from masses of data. Amitai had also continued to work in intelligence afterwards and had set up an automated trading platform for institutional investors. So, he wasn’t from the world of healthcare, but he recognized that it could benefit from advanced systems that had been developed elsewhere. Handling data more efficiently “I understood there was a big problem with data handling in the healthcare industry,” he tells ISRAEL21c. He saw it when each of his three children were born. Every time, the doctor asked for the family’s medical history. And he saw it with the death of his mother-in-law. He believes AI would have suggested ovarian cancer as a diagnosis much sooner. The main problem is in primary care, the people who are in charge of your health on a daily basis “It’s not the physician’s fault, it’s not the care team fault, they’re doing their best, but they just don’t have the tools,” he says. “The main problem is in primary care, the people who are in charge of your health on a daily basis. They’re reactive instead of proactive. They’re trying to solve a single problem, not your whole health.” And they generally lack the resources to understand what the problem is and to diagnose it correctly. Lavaa’s AI-powered Preventive Care Engine Platform assists the physician by offering evidence-based insights. “We are not allowing the computer to try to automatically detect the conditions. We’re using the accepted worldwide care protocols, but we’re using AI to extract the data,” says Amitai. “Physicians cannot go through all of this data by themselves in the amount of time that they have. It’s just impossible, so this is giving them a huge backup. “The number of parameters for a physician to check and the number of possible diseases is infinite, and time is limited. But computers are really good at matching parameters to diseases. “I realized that technology from the intelligence world already did this, so it was a question of applying it to healthcare.” Prevention, intervention Lavaa is all about prevention and early intervention. Its AI platform can generate questions for a particular patient based on what it sees in their records. It may, for example, ask if a female patient remembers the age at which she had her first period – something that’s relevant for breast cancer, but is never recorded in an EMR (electronic medical record). Or it may send targeted messages, questionnaires, or notifications. It acts as an early warning system, designed to prevent the development of chronic or psychological diseases, and cancer. Lavaa currently looks after over 700,000 patients, all in the US, though the company has plans to expand globally. Amitai estimates the technology has so far saved 1,500 lives. “These are people who had a condition that could have been terminal but caught it on time and we managed to alert the physician, which meant the patients got either the right or better drugs, and better treatment, or a referral to the right place,” he says. Lavaa is not the only such AI solution, but Amitai says the healthcare market is big enough for everybody. Some other companies use AI to both inform and to diagnose – unlike Lavaa – or as a “black box” providing a diagnosis but no explanation of its “thinking.” The company has 12 staff members at its offices in Ra’anana, central Israel, and a team working in the US. Lavaa was founded in 2021, has attracted $5 million in investments. A Series A funding round will be launched later this year. “We want to go global,” Amitai says. “Our solution can work anywhere, and we believe it can improve healthcare around the world.” For more information, click here. To read the original article click here.

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How to Live Past 100 Years Old + The Toxins, Mindsets, & Habits That Are Rapidly Aging Us

AHA Publisher — Thu, 03 Dec 2020 08:00:18 +0000

Dr. Caroline Leaf – Aging is an inevitable part of life, but this doesn’t mean we must accept that our health will get worse as we get older. In this podcast (episode #232) and blog, I speak with successful businessman, visionary and longevity investor Sergey Young about his new book, The Science and Technology of Growing Young, quick and simple longevity habits that can help you stay healthy and age well, the three horizons of longevity, dangerous aging “hacks” people should avoid, the relationship between mental health and longevity, and more! As Sergey points out, you can improve your health and longevity by transforming the way you live your life. There is so much hope for the future! Aging doesn’t have to be a curse. Sergey has made it his life’s work to show people that longevity is not only possible, but achievable, which is why he founded the Longevity Vision Fund. This fund invests in: More affordable technology for early diagnostics, so that we can catch things early like cancer, which means better recovery rates and longevity! Growing livers in lymph nodes, to overcome donor liver availability issues and the medical cost of transplants. Technology and science that gives hope for long-term, sustainable healing and longevity. Unfortunately, the science of longevity has become a pretty crowded and confusing space. It is hard to know what to do to stay young and healthy, especially when there is so much conflicting advice out there! One of the best ways to approach the field of longevity science is what Sergey calls the 3 horizons of longevity: 1. What you can do today. This involves changes to your lifestyle, including: a) Focusing on early diagnostics (comprehensive, annual medical checkups). b) Getting rid of bad habits, like smoking and eating junk food. c) Eating a healthy diet. A healthy, mindful diet can extend your life by 3 to 10 years. This includes eating lots of veggies and fruit and restricting your calorie intake! As Sergey notes, eating healthy is not more expensive than eating processed food all the time—this is an illusion. If you plan well, real food fills you up for longer and is less expensive, especially in the long-term, because it reduces your overall healthcare costs. d) Exercising regularly. Try different styles of working out and aim to get 10000 steps in a day. e) Practicing mind management (mindfulness and meditation). Good mind management builds up your stress resilience, thereby decreasing the impact of toxic stressors on your mental and physical health. We need to remember that our body is not designed to handle constant stress. But in our modern world, so many people are stressed all the time, and it is affecting our health! Thankfully, there are so many great devices, apps, books and tips out there to help us learn how to manage our mind and control how everyday stressors affect our overall wellbeing and longevity. In fact, when you learn how to manage your mind, all the other pieces of a healthy lifestyle fall into place, because you are learning how to live mindfully! This is the foundation of aging well. For more on mind management, health and longevity, preorder my new book Cleaning Up Your Mental Mess. f) Starting the day off right. It is important to have a good morning routine. Bring in different activities, like listening to the silence, visualizing how amazing your life will be, telling yourself that today will be an excellent day, doing some physical activity for 1-2 minutes, journaling, or reading. g) Monitoring the quality of your sleep. h) Being a good person. Be kind, give back to the world and be a meaningful part of the community. Just start with one small act of kindness every day, and see how your life changes! i) Having a purpose—live beyond yourself! Having a sense of purpose and giving back in life not only adds years to your life, but life to your years. The great news is that you don’t have to wait for new and exciting technologies to improve your health and longevity! Sergey has lots of great longevity tips on his website, so check them out. 2. What will be available tomorrow. This is the focus of Sergey’s Longevity Vision Fund. It focuses on technologies that are in the development stage, like stem cell therapies and smart hospitals, which will be available in the next 5 to 10 years. 3. What you need to be aware of for the future. This is the visionary horizon, including the ability to change organs, human avatars and merging A.I. and the human brain. This is both an exciting and undefined stage in the longevity field. Health really is wealth! As Sergey points out, if we are feeling sick and awful all the time, what kind of contribution can we make to the world? But, if we feel healthy and happy, we can be a resource, instead of just drawing on resources! Of course, this is sometimes easier said than done, especially these days. The global COVID-19 pandemic has hit a lot of us hard. It can be challenging to have hope for the future, especially when we feel like we have lost so much this year: time, money, structure, excitement, celebrations, family, friends, community—you name it! But the current pandemic doesn’t have to be the be all and end all. As Sergey notes in his recent Thrive Global article, COVID-19 has taught us some very important life lessons: We need to embrace uncertainty and realize how fragile life is. COVID-19 has shown us what matters the most, highlighting what is important in our lives and how small acts of kindness and connection are so powerful. We need to realize that adversity can be an opportunity to grow. The current pandemic has given many of us a chance to rediscover ourselves and our relationship with the world around us. We need to learn how to use technology well. The current pandemic has shown many of us the benefits of technology, and how it offers us unique opportunities to learn new things and socialize in new ways. To read the original article click here. For more articles from Dr. Leaf click here.

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