Microsoft’s Craig Mundie discussed how machine learning and the Kinect sensor can be used in health care
CMicrosoft uses machine learning for a number of its own products, such as its Bing search engine.
He also showed off ways that health workers could use Microsoft’s Kinect sensor, currently used in conjunction with the Xbox 360 game console. Kinect lets users move their arms, bodies and voices rather than a game controller to interact with games.
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Mundie showed an example where a health care worker could use voice commands to sift through patients to identify those who might be eligible to be entered into a new program. He was presented with photographs of the patients and could choose one in order to see visual representations of clinical data. For example, a chart showed one patient’s weight, and Mundie could drag an incident where the patient sprained her ankle onto the chart to see how that incident correlated with changes in weight.
He also showed a scenario where diabetes patients could be part of a virtual support group. The group appeared as avatars sitting in a room, and members used Kinect sensors to interact in the virtual group. The application uses avatars for individuals because some people would prefer not to use their true image, as they would in a video chat. But the avatars move and reflect facial expressions just like the real person does. That could allow a health care worker to review a recorded video of the session to look for clues that individuals may not be engaged by the sessions, Mundie said.
Mundie has spoken at the Pacific Health Summit many times in the past, and often the futuristic technologies he demonstrates become commercial, he said. For example, he once discussed ways that inkjet printers could inject medicines onto pills or other surfaces, and this year a major drug company is completing a trial doing just that. He also once showed off robots that could be used in health care, and there are now 400 of them being used commercially.