Vyasa links with NVIDIA to boost AI capability

Artificial Intelligence (AI) healthcare firm Vyasa Analytics has joined a programme designed to nurture start-ups using cutting-edge technology.

Vyasa, which works in the healthcare and life sciences industry, is now part of graphics card giant NVIDIA’s Inception programme, which enables sectors – such as healthcare – to gain the greatest benefits of AI through deep learning.

Deep learning allows machines to learn by building knowledge layer by layer and does not confine this learning to any specific task or algorithm. It imitates the human brain’s neural networking and detects patterns on which decisions can be based.

NVIDIA uses GPU (graphics processing unit) computing as opposed to CPU (central processing unit) computing. This allows vast amounts of information to be processed repeatedly, swiftly and efficiently.

The Inception programme helps start-ups during critical stages of product development, prototyping and deployment. Inception members receive a custom set of ongoing benefits, from hardware grants and marketing support to training with deep learning experts.

Vyasa uses software to allow users to apply deep learning in specialised ways to large data sets such as text, images, quantitative data and chemical structures. It will use NVIDIA’s GPU technology to train deep learning models and hopefully bring cutting edge healthcare to market more quickly.

AI is being used in healthcare more commonly, with the insights provided through machine learning enabling rapid progress in medicine and pharma.

Researchers from Technion in Israel recently showed that the drug development process could be made more efficient by getting computers to learn the “vocabulary” of drug discovery.

Also, the NHS uses AI to help diagnose eye diseases. Technology developed by Google’s DeepMind and Moorfields Eye Hospital can help to speed up diagnoses and detect signs of disease so that intervention can begin earlier. Though this technology is not yet approved and needs to undergo clinical trials, its results are impressive, making correct recommendations in more than 94% of cases, matching the performance of expert clinicians.

Many pharma companies are using AI to identify and screen drugs, more accurately predict drug candidates and cut R&D costs and time, with the McKinsey Global Institute predicting that AI and the use of ‘big data’ could revolutionise pharmaceutical R&D, generating up to $100 billion for stakeholders as efficiencies improve throughout the pipeline.