Neurological diseases are a major challenge for health specialists worldwide. 3,000 experts from the Spanish Society of Neurology (SEN) have debated days ago in Seville the incorporation of technologies such as big data or artificial intelligence (AI) to help better understand neurological pathologies, their impact on the patient and, how it occurs with multiple sclerosis, why a more personalized view is necessary in each case.
Multiple sclerosis (MS) is a serious neurodegenerative disease, with extensive and complex symptoms, that affects 47,000 people in Spain, 600,000 in Europe and more than 2,000,000 worldwide. The diagnosis occurs most frequently between the ages of 20 and 40, in full vital activity, so its diagnosis is a severe blow to the patient when he receives the news.
“Given the heterogeneity of multiple sclerosis, the management of this pathology can improve considerably with the implementation of artificial intelligence and big data,” says Dr.Ignacio Hernández Medrano , neurologist, CEO and co-founder of the Big Data projects SAVANA and MENDELIAN and the Princess of Girona Company Foundation Award 2019. The specialist highlights that it is likely that in the next year we will begin to see the results of these applications published in high-impact scientific journals, and at that moment it will be possible to see how these algorithms begin to change the approach to this and other neurological pathologies.
Also, Dr. Mar Tintoré, from the Multiple Sclerosis Center of Catalonia (Cemcat), highlights the usefulness of this type of technology to help clinicians better understand a pathology with such complexity, and explains how together with other groups they are working on a set of state-of-the-art computational algorithms to create a risk calculator that predicts the probability of accumulation of disability for each patient at all times.
Thanks to big data correlations are beginning to be established with all the clinical information generated with the entry of new technologies. Treating epidemiological or genomic data, more related to what is known as Real World Data and personalized medicine, can help make decisions and get closer to the causality of the development of diseases. In addition, this intelligence provides the ability to segment with great precision and anticipate. “Now we have a finer algorithm that allows us to better define what each patient needs,” says Dr. Hernández Medrano.
The use of the image as a source of data in medicine is becoming common, but new tools such as blood tests, ICU records, information on vital signs and the patient’s medical history will soon be used. These data will generate a type of algorithm that will be able to answer specific questions, and specialists will be able to predict how each patient’s disease will progress and provide earlier control.
The usefulness of tools that make use of artificial intelligence to facilitate the diagnosis of rare diseases, through access to millions of genetic data, also opens a door to change in their knowledge. This is the case of spinal muscular atrophy (SMA). SMA is a rare, genetic, neuromuscular disease that often has a dire prognosis. Its evolution entails symptoms that can seriously affect the motor development of patients, limiting their ability to sit or walk, as well as making it difficult to move arms, hands, head and neck, breathing and swallowing. In Spain there are approximately 1,500 families that live with the disease and of which clinical experts estimate that the number of living patients ranges between 300 and 350 in our country.
Biogen Spain, an expert company in neuroscience that focuses on advancing research programs in multiple sclerosis and neuroimmunology, neuromuscular disorders, movement disorders, Alzheimer’s and dementia, ophthalmology, immunology, neurocognitive disorders, acute neurology and pain, details how it is essential make cutting-edge science and technologies, such as big data or artificial intelligence, available to those who need it.
