Adaptation of novel technologies in Biological Data Storage, Access & Sharing A new revolution in Cardiac Care

Dr KM Cherian, Chairman and CEO, Dr KM Cherian Heart Foundation opines on how seeding of biological data with the help of advanced technologies on cloud platforms can be used for transmission and to educate the future

Technology has percolated across various sectors disrupting all industries, especially with the healthcare sector being at no exception. With this being said, it has become imperative to make optimum use of technology to save lives. The implementation of data storage access and sharing is going to play a critical role in the healthcare sector by facilitating technology.

Advanced technologies in Information and Computer Science offer tremendous opportunities for innovations in healthcare. Diagnostic and therapeutic systems are now based on various technologies like web and mobile based applications, sensing, computing and bioinformatics. The volume of biological and clinical data is steadily being accumulated as science progresses, resulting in the cost of technology to decrease. In this scenario, the challenge is to generate sufficient storage system for the collected data and to create a global access space. By doing so, the data can be optimally utilised and interpreted by data scientists in multidimensional ways.

Another challenge is to preserve the valuable biological specimens beyond the limitation of time. Over the generations, various anatomical anomalies, especially cardiac aberrations were used for educating physicians and surgeons. However, over time, these biological specimens can encounter shrinking and distortion, which would ultimately be a loss of knowledge to the medical posterity. Thus, digitalisation of biological specimens to 3D modelled images could create a virtual pathological museum that could be preserved for the years to come.

Simulated computational experiences like Virtual Reality (VR) and Augmented Reality (AR) can be transformed into 3D images that could be referred by physicians for diagnostics, surgeons for operational planning, which would guide them to do the procedure in a finer manner. The virtual resource can be accessed by any one from any part of the world, which opens up plethora of opportunities for education, academic reference, research and clinical applications. It will also help to evaluate more accurately the conditions, under which the surgeries are performed and the possible intra-operative complications.

In healthcare sector, AR/VR technologies have many proven applications in its ability to create visualisation and an interactive platform with three-dimensional representations of bio-specimens, organs and organelles. This technology also can be used as a tool to educate medical students, patients, even lay men to understand the surgical procedures and the post-surgical outcomes. Most of the hospitals around the world have been using CT and MRI images for understanding the anomalies in patient’s diagnosis. The 3D segmented reconstructed images of these scans would provide more defined depiction of the relevant anatomy. VR with Head Mounted Displays (HMDs) would be a novel method for collecting necessary information from the images which would help in decision making systems.

The sheer amount of biological data in the form of images, genetic codes, biological interpretations, simulation datasets etc. are creating more demand for large scale computing and storage systems. Recently trending cloud computing resources have got the potential to solve these issues by providing relatively cheaper and reliable data servers. The data stored from one corner of the world can be accessed and analysed by any other corner, in exact quantity and quality as it was at the time of its generation. This data could also be referred by future generations to analyse the distinctions and differences or to derive the patterns and to use as training sets for Machine Learning (ML) techniques and Artificial Intelligence (AI).

Presently, data scientists in different parts of the world are configuring the system, to interpret large mounds of electronic health data to further create automatic systems governed by AI. This in turn would enable clinicians to come up with medical diagnosis easily and treatment methods, with most convenient way of visualisation and interactions.

Although Nalanda University was one of the first universities in the world, the knowledge gathered through various studies could not be preserved for perpetuity. Hence technological developments like 3D printing, 3D modelling, augmented reality, and virtual reality along with seeding of biological data on cloud platform would result in the transmission and retrieval of data to educate the future, thus preventing another knowledge massacre.

China is marching ahead with over 10 per cent gross domestic product (GDP) growth rates over the last two decades, whereas India is trying to leapfrog with over 6 per cent GDP. It is interesting to note that R&D intensity in India is less than 1 per cent while in China it is 1.4 per cent. The need of the hour is to have more focus on research in India to climb the ladder.

Considering the above said revolutionary changes happening in the field of cardiac care, the first international conference on “Biological data storage, access and sharing, Virtual Reality, Augmented Reality and Cloud seeding of Cardiac Pathology specimens for Perpetuity” was held on September 17, 2019 by Dr KM Cherian Heart Foundation. It had a huge response with more than 230 participants from varied specialities. The event was graced by active participation of well-known scientific institutes and universities who are bestowed with technical expertise in this field such as UT South-western, Boston Children Hospital, Sheba International, Tel-Aviv, Israel and many others. A Hands on training on using the 3D software was also provided to all participants by Materialize Team with a free five day license for the same.