The AI is programmed to identify abnormal patterns that match up with patterns of diseases and ailments. If any potential disease is detected, the user can take the resulting report to their physician for further testing and treatment. — Image by rawpixel.com on Freepik
Infinite 8 Industries, a Colorado Springs-based industrial artificial intelligence (AI) firm, has created a technology that might sound as if it's right out of a science fiction film, but Ean Mikale, the company's founder, believes his technology is the future.
Mikale, an AI expert, author, international speaker and engineer, has focused his career on cutting-edge technologies and Infinite 8 Industries' disease scan is one of the latest. Mikale took Infinite 8 Institute, Infinite 8 Industries' sister company that operates a commercial drone pilot and drone software apprenticeships, from $15,000 in annual revenue to over $1 million in three years.
His company's home health screening tool, Forever AI, is still going through a proof of concept, or pilot phase, as well as an FDA authorization process. The idea is that the AI scans users for diseases and health conditions including Covid-19, depression and breast cancer using a selfie and gives patients results within minutes, Carlos Kieliszewski, a web developer for the company, said.
"Essentially, our goal is to provide health care anywhere," Mikale said. "You should be able to receive at least a base level of health care screening anywhere."
The app scans a photo taken by the user and analyzes patterns of pixels and identifies bio markers, which are signs of normal or abnormal features. The AI is programmed to identify abnormal patterns that match up with patterns of diseases and ailments. If any potential disease is detected, the user can take the resulting report to their physician for further testing and treatment.
If the AI can't identify the pixel patterns it has captured, it scans for data on the Internet as well as other AI systems and the Medical Imaging Data Exchange that Infinite 8 Industries created, which is similar to eBay but for medical imaging data. Data from the exchange could be as simple as a Facebook photo of a person who shared they had a positive Covid-19 test result, Mikale said.
"That information is valuable to our artificial intelligence, which may order that data and purchase that data directly from you," Mikale said. "Or we're allowing third parties such as clinicians, health care providers, academics and researchers to also conduct clinical trials on this platform."
The infinite data exchange will be deployed by the end of the year.
Users who may be concerned about sending private photos of their bodies to the Forever AI "doctor" will not risk having their data jeopardized since the photos are not saved; the AI only learns from the data it gleans from the images, Kieliszewski said.
"The photo is actually never saved to disc," Kieliszewski "So even if the program fails, it wouldn't fail to delete it because there's nothing to delete, it's not even on the disk in the first place."
Drawing from a colossal amount of data, Forever AI's algorithms are 99.9% accurate, Mikale said.
"There's a possibility that AI can create a new standard of accuracy even beyond that of the PCR test (for Covid)," Mikale said. "... Bringing that to the table is really going to be a game changer for medicine."
But Forever AI isn't designed to take the place of health care that's already in place; instead, its purpose is to give physicians more information and allow patients to identify their need to seek medical intervention sooner.
"We're referred to as a clinical decision support system," Mikale said. "...so, the earliest point of clinical contact, which is where the patient decides, 'Uh oh, I think something's wrong, and I need more information.'"
The company is working on raising venture capital through November and December. – The Gazette, Colorado Springs/Tribune News Service
