Healthcare Technology
Quantum Computing In Medical Practice
Application Of Quantum Computing In Personalizing Healthcare Delivery
The Information Age is a period in the epoch of humanity that revolutionized how we communicate and store our information. It was not until the mid 2oth century epoch we saw a rapid shift from traditional industry handed by the industrial revolution solely in the shape of information technology.
The time-honored industrial shift was substantial, as it conveyed groundbreaking solutions to make us efficient, fast, and robust. The orthodox computing that offered the information management of its era employed a straightforward concept that every piece of information stored within a digital or computer system is the derivatives and combination of multiple sequences of a single unit "block." That building block is called a binary bit (or simply a bit). As a rule of thumb, the single primary block or bit can have two states; on or off, "0" or "1". Combining ones and zeros determines which information is entered into and processed by the computer.
Today, almost three decades into the computer science revolution of how we handle information and data, thus we are inevitably going through another industrial transition.
What if, we could have a system that would complete a task that would otherwise take traditional computer ten years to complete, does the same task in one hundred seconds?
Quantum computing technology has already transitioned from bit-driven computing to one that also follows the two-state phenomenon. However, as a system that can take any quantum (minimum amount of any physical entity involved in an interaction) superposition of two independent (physically different) quantum states. That is called qubit!
For instance, a qubit can be the spin of the electron around the atom in which the two states can be taken as spin up and spin down; or the polarization of a single photon in which one can take the two states to be the horizontal polarization and the vertical polarization.
Contrary to traditional computing, where the bit has to be on or off, quantum computing allows the qubit to simultaneously adopt a coherent superposition of both states. That is fundamental to quantum mechanics and quantum physics, a feature that functions based on relativity between two states rather than two states themselves.
Although quantum computing is still in its infancy, it is starting to disrupt all industries as fast as its inherent functionality.
Quantum Computing Is Breaking New Grounds In Healthcare
Quantum computing will be able to solve many complex intractable healthcare problems at the speed of light. Its utility in medicine and medical practice is by no means an enigma.
Quantum opens the door to personalized healthcare and precision medicine by laying the foundation for individualized clinical diagnosis and treatment modalities. For instance, quantum computers will be able to run genomic sequencing for every individual in a short time with overwhelming accuracy, something that would be close to impossible to do or at the very least not feasible to carry out on an individual basis.
Quantum computing enables targeted treatment advice that makes the best possible use of existing medications. It can support robust machine learning (ML) means to match symptoms against an almost endless set of diseases and conditions and render radiologic imaging sensitive enough to detect early disease.
Utility Of Quantum Computing In Healthcare Delivery And Medical Practice
Quantum's capability to tally an immense amount of medical information will make many cross-functional data sets available to clinicians in their patient risk factor models. For example, They will be able to examine factors like environmental to evaluate the effect of pollution on a patient's health history with more accuracy and speed.
The utility of quantum computing in medical practice management is endless. Besides making it personalized and precise, it will take the point of care from medical clinics to patients' living rooms. Soon, clinicians will be able to securely exchange and exploit the ocean of patient data driven by health sensors, wearables, and various medical devices covering the cloud. While at it, quantum computers will help make meaningful use of those data. Moreover, the exact and robust means of patient oversight through connected systems may render physical hospitals impractical, thus making patients the point of care.
The utility of quantum computing today is the prelude to the cross-border healthcare of the future and genuine, personalized healthcare. From lifestyle prediction and moving from preventive to predictive health, arriving at the perfect decision support system, and even augmenting clinical judgment with unique skills, all are knocking on our doors, even though they are still immature.
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