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Vanina Mazzillo
We believe the healthcare system is at a turning point, leveraging digital health technologies to render longstanding inefficiencies in healthcare a thing of the past. Artificial intelligence stands at the heart of this transformation, with the potential to improve medical outcomes by 30-40% while saving the United States as much as 10% of annual healthcare spending.1, 2
Drug discovery is a notably difficult process. Despite technological advancements, developing a new medicine still takes 10-15 years and costs $1.3 billion on average.3, 4 Also, 90% of investigational drugs fail when tested in humans due to having no effect or too many side effects.5 Complicating matters, clinical trials are notoriously difficult to design and operate, often impeding the approval of treatments.
Computer simulation software has been used to develop investigational drugs since the 1990s, successfully reducing costs and increasing success rates in drug discovery.6 New AI-enabled models, however, propose even more favorable unit economics. By running millions of scenarios, AI software can reduce the cost of preclinical drug development by 20-40% and accelerate design and validation of drug candidates by as much as 15x.7, 8
The impact of broader AI drug discovery is sizable and has the potential to change the drug discovery process as we know it. An estimated 30% of new drugs are expected to be discovered using AI technology by 2025, up from zero today.9 An increased use of AI drug discovery is expected to, in turn, lead to an additional 50 novel therapies over a ten-year period, which alone could translate to over $50 billion in revenues.10
Designing and conducting clinical trials is known for its inherent complexity and challenges. Artificial intelligence can reduce operating costs of clinical trials and offers a scalable solution for some of the biggest stumbling blocks in the drug development process.
Clinical trials can also benefit from digital twins. These are AI-generated virtual models of real patients, simulating different dosing regiments and patient progressions. Through their impact can be significant, digital twins can reduce the size of the control group for clinical trials by 30%, meaning a greater proportion of clinical trial participants could receive the active ingredient versus placebo.16
Though healthcare has made great strides in digitizing operations, an estimated 80% of U.S. healthcare documents are still sent via snail mail and fax.17 Documents in the industry are increasingly digital via electronic medical record (EMR) adoption, though the process remains inefficient and labor-intensive. Not surprisingly, 78% of physicians report health IT-related burnout and fatigue.18
Conversational AI tools allow physicians to input information in their own words and the service handles the rest. Digital health firm Doximity recently came out with DocsGPT, an AI-powered chatbot tool that facilitates prior authorization, insurance claims, and patient communication. Once the doctor approves the AI-generated message, the platform also automatically sends it to the corresponding party. Recent studies have shown that when physicians utilize AI-based chatbots, responses are typically longer, higher in quality, and more empathetic, improving overall bedside manner.28
It is still early days for investors to quantify the impact of artificial intelligence, though the potential use cases for AI healthcare promise to revolutionize the entire industry. That said, picking individual winners in a field as vast as healthcare, which encompasses everything from drug discovery to insurance to treatments and beyond, can be challenging. ETFs can provide broad exposure to this mega trend, whether investors want to focus on digital health, genomics, or more pure-play AI.
This material represents an assessment of the market environment at a specific point in time and is not intended to be a forecast of future events, or a guarantee of future results. This information is not intended to be individual or personalized investment advice and should not be used for trading purposes. Please consult a financial advisor for more information regarding your investment situation.
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Range anxiety has been a significant limitation in the electrification of ground freight fleets, particularly for middle-mile and long-haul electric trucks that heavily rely on highway-side charging facilities. In this paper, we propose a novel electric truck operations model that incorporates trailer battery exchange strategies to reduce the dependence on constructing charging infrastructure along highways. An operator manages two types of vehicle fleets with the objective of minimizing the total operational cost: (1) Trucks comprise an electric tractor and a trailer that may be equipped with backup batteries; (2) Feeder vehicles that distribute electric trailers at exchange locations. Trucks that drain out batteries can detour to these exchange locations and replace charged trailers to save charging times. The planning problem of this electric truck network is a location-and-routing problem that can be reformulated as a bi-level program, where the upper level seeks the optimal locations for exchanging trailer. and lower level is a Mixed Integer Program (MIP) for mixed fleet routing. We conduct computational experiments using the real-world Freight Analysis Framework (FAF) data in the Southeastern United States. Our results demonstrate that this novel network design can significantly enhance operational efficiency compared to traditional battery recharging methods, such as battery swapping stations, while reducing the demand for constructing new charging facilities. Moreover, our analysis provides detailed insights into how to choose between various electric truck operation strategies.
American older adults, a population where over a quarter experience loneliness, which is associated with a 26% increased risk of premature death rates (Holt-Lunstad, 2015). The study seeks to understand how this demographic perceives the role of technology in reducing feelings of loneliness and to identify the barriers and facilitators influencing their use of technology. With the U.S. Surgeon General, Vivek H. Murthy, M.D., calling for immediate attention to the "epidemic of loneliness and isolation," the research highlights the potential of technology, such as video calls, phone calls, messaging, and social media platforms, to reduce loneliness.Despite the increasing use of technology across diverse populations, a digital divide persists due to social determinants like race, age, economic status, and infrastructure, leading to disparities in technology access and literacy. Prior research has largely focused on predominantly White participants, leaving a gap in understanding the experiences of African American older adults. This dissertation aims to fill that gap through semi-structured interviews with a convenience sample of 15 individuals, analyzed using thematic analysis.The anticipated findings are expected to contribute to the development of targeted interventions that can leverage technology to enhance social connections and support for African American older adults, addressing a significant public health challenge.
In May 2022, I was a volunteer at Les Rocher Oasis des Cits in Les Mureaux, France. Les Mureaux is a city heavily populated by immigrants. Les Rocher is an organization of community centers that focus on bridging the gap between the old lives of these immigrants and their new lives in France. I participated in this experience because the school where I studied abroad requires students to complete a month long field experience. The reasoning for this is so their students have the opportunity to make connections with people and see how different communities are affected by different factors, and not just how to send emails and answer phone calls at a job.During this month-long experience I lived in Les Mureaux and participated in many different activities. I participated in homework help and games with younger kids, morning coffee with the ladies of the community, home visits to the elderly, and other community building activities. During this time, I learned how a strong sense of community is important for somebody going through a transition as big as immigrating to a new country. In French 309: Reading French Texts, we learned about cultural adaptation, illustrated through the stories of immigrants. The people I interacted with during my experience shared the common story of having to start a new life in a new place. Though I learned stories like these in my class, I started to truly understand what it was like by seeing it first hand while volunteering at Les Rocher. The support that these community members had for each other, always willing to help or simply be a listening ear, made me want to be a supportive part of my community as well. It may not be something as big as immigrating to a new country, but there is always someone around you that might be going through the same things as you and being there for each other can be more powerful than one can imagine.
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