Virtual GP That Beats the Doctor to Right Diagnosis
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
The Times, UK 20 2G M Wednesday August 12 2020 | the times News Harry Dunn’s TONY FRANCIS This Country family seek team to make remote trial period comedy Neil Johnston Matthew Moore Midlands Correspondent Media Correspondent The government has been urged to The siblings behind the BBC mocku- consider a trial via videolink for the mentary This Country have revealed wife of an American diplomat who their next project: a period comedy. fled after the death of Harry Dunn. Daisy May Cooper, 34 and Charlie Mr Dunn, a 19-year-old motorcy- Cooper, 31, endeared themselves to clist, was killed last August in a head- millions as Kerry and Kurtan Muck- on collision with Anne Sacoolas’s car lowe, a bumbling pair of Cotswolds shortly after she turned out of RAF ne’er-do-wells, in the Bafta-winning Croughton in Northamptonshire. show. They are swapping village life Mrs Sacoolas, 42, left the country, for a historical romp after the third claiming diplomatic immunity. She and final series of This Country was was charged with causing death by broadcast earlier this year. dangerous driving but the United “Charlie and I have started writing States rejected an extradition request. our new thing, which is very, very dif- Now Mr Dunn’s local MP, Andrea ferent,” Daisy May told the White Leadsom, has asked for a remote trial. Wine Question Time podcast, hosted In a letter to the home secretary, by Kate Thornton. “It’s a period thing foreign secretary, attorney general . but it’s funny. and crown prosecution service, she “For This Country, we couldn’t said Mrs Sacoolas could remain on write for ‘names’, like for famous US soil. “Should there be a custodial actors, it would have to be [for] sentence, she could serve it in the US.” unknowns. So this is actually quite Mr Dunn’s mother, Charlotte funny to have an actor in mind and be Charles, said that she wanted justice able to write a part for them specific- for her son and that a trial via video- ally. It’s very, very early days but we’re link could be a step towards closure. In a spin An anti-clockwise roundabout appeared in Berkhamsted, Hertfordshire, yesterday. The error was fixed hours later really enjoying it.” Virtual GP that beats the doctor to right diagnosis Tom Whipple Science Editor will ultimately limit it: computers see was the cause. A GP would know it is correlation, they don’t see causation. angina. Lots of people have emphyse- Are you feeling ill? The computer will Judea Pearl, an artificial intelli- ma and those symptoms not because see you now. And just like a human gence pioneer at the University of one causes the other but because doctor this medical app will use “im- California Los Angeles, calls this the both have a deeper cause: smoking. agination” when making a diagnosis. problem of “why”. People know that a To train a computer not to fall into The result is a program that can disease causes symptoms, computers this trap, to help it spot causation, diagnose illness with greater accura- know that there are symptoms involves teaching it to consider cy than a GP — achieved thanks to an people have when they also have a “counterfactuals”. Would there still approach that lets it think like a GP. disease. The difference is crucial. be floods without umbrellas? What if In 1,671 test cases the program, “This is about the soul of data the patient did not have emphysema? from the British healthcare company science,” Professor Pearl, who was Would the symptoms go away? Babylon Health working with col- not involved in the research, said. AI Using medical modelling the com- leagues at UCL, correctly diagnosed has found the “low hanging fruit”, but puter is able to “imagine” what would a disease 77 per cent of the time, com- expecting true intelligence to emerge happen if a disease was magically pared with 71 per cent by doctors. is, he says, a little like “simulating evo- cured. Did the symptoms go too? But the most significant achieve- lution and expecting to get Einstein “If the symptoms did go away then ment, outlined in the journal Nature from an amoeba. It takes too long”. we’d know the thing that generated Communications, was not its accura- Consider a computer program them was the disease,” Jonathan cy, but the way it made its decisions. trained to look for the cause of flood- Richens, the lead author, said. “In the Conventional artificial intelligence ing on roads. It might see that when case of emphysema, they won’t go has progressed by applying more and streets are waterlogged lots of people away because it doesn’t make you more computer power to look for also use umbrellas, and conclude that have chest pain or dizziness.” correlations. This has produced umbrellas cause floods. In fact both Professor Pearl said that it was programs that can outclass people at have a deeper cause: rain. early days but he was “very hopeful radiography, mammography and Similarly, imagine an elderly smok- they have broken a barrier here.” even in previously impregnable are- er with chest pain, nausea and “I’m going to use it as a warning to nas such as the games chess and Go. fatigue. Many people with those machine learning enthusiasts in the Some scientists have worried that symptoms have emphysema, and a US — you’re going to be made obso- there is a flaw in the approach that computer might conclude that this lete by companies in the UK.” Prenatal depression affects boys’ brains Greg Hurst Social Affairs Editor pregnancy and after their babies and was associated with increased were born. Once the children were aggression and hyperactivity. Boys whose mothers suffer aged four they were given an MRI The correlation between higher depression during pregnancy are scan to assess their white matter con- levels of depressive symptoms among more likely to be aggressive and nections between brain regions that mothers during pregnancy and dis- hyperactive as they are about to start are involved in emotional processing. ruptive behaviour was less strong school, a study has found. Their parents also completed a among girls. Brain scans showed that they had survey asking about behaviour. The study involved 54 mothers and altered connections between the The research, by the University of their children, of whom 30 were boys. parts of the brain that affect emotion. Calgary, Canada, and two medical Given its small scale some caution Their mothers also reported child research institutes and published in should be attached its findings. behavioural problems. the Journal of Neuroscience, found Prenatal depression has been One in five women experience de- that boys whose mothers experi- linked previously to behavioural pressive symptoms during pregnancy. enced prenatal depression were more problems in children but the latest Researchers asked women a series likely to show altered brain connec- research highlights weakened brain of questions to check for depressive tivity which could affect the connections as an explanation for symptoms three times during their regulation of their emotional state how this happens..