Hiten Shah

Medical Research Summarizer - Translate complex research into easy to read summaries

Add a comment

Replies

Best
Kumar Thangudu
We've built a system that allows us to translate difficult to read research abstracts and convert them into 4 to 8 bullet point descriptions that are readable by the common person. It's like Blinkist, but for complex research. Our backend consists of a ton of med school PhD's and researchers. I myself had an autoimmune disorder for 10 years, well I still have it, but I've been in remission for the last 2 years. Making sense of the research out there is a tall order without an organic chemistry background. When I was first diagnosed, I ended up spending hours trying to read research I barely understood, but that was relative child's play for a PhD to clarify. It's called Ulcerative colitis and has no known cure. Some of the most intriguing research that I'd wish I had been cognizant of and had a way to read is this article(Http://bit.ly/fodmapfree) on FODMAPS (Fermentable Oligosaccharides, Disaccharides, Monosaccharides, and Polyols Saccharrides) and their impact on those with Irritable Bowel Syndrome. Had I known, I would have experimented with something like it to see outcomes. Keep in mind, there's no such thing as an FDA approved diet.
Samir Doshi
@datarade Have family in the healthcare field -- they'll love this!
Kumar Thangudu
@samir_doshi Would love to hear their feedback on it.
Kumar Thangudu
@kieranchase Thanks! Feel free to submit any research you find. As well, check out the latest research on UC here: https://www.hdphealth.com/2016/0...
Gabriela Hromis
@datarade This looks really useful. I really like that it's human powered since AI attempts at this I've seen didn't work so well. I really hope it also addresses the quality of the particular paper (such as size, whether the findings are preliminary, whether other papers mostly support or contradict the conclusion of this paper etc.), since this is very important metadata.
Kumar Thangudu
@ghromis Thanks for the feedback. For our tracker where you can tell us which disease to monitor for new research, our plan is to rule out low quality journals. Unfortunately, the methodology for defining low quality is somewhat consensus driven. We hope to change that over time with more feedback from our writers. (Med School students and PhDs). Thanks for taking the time comment. Very insightful. Will share with our writers to see what they think on the metadata notion.
Alex Miller
Looks awesome. How much does it cost?
Kumar Thangudu
@fotoflo It's free. If we observe a pattern of a student posting the requests, we'll inquire to make sure it's not for homework. Our number one priority is sick patients, their families, and people trying to make sense of complex diseases in general.
Kumar Thangudu
@fotoflo That being said, our turn around time will vary. As well, there's some research that's not easily translational. For example, explaining a monoclonal antibody has a ton of dependencies in biology to explain to someone.
Alex Miller
@datarade How will you make money?
Kumar Thangudu
@fotoflo We help patients aggregate their full medical records and map them against a huge list of clinical trials criterion. 10 years ago, when I aggregated my own records, it cost me several thousand dollars. As well, there was no viable way to search for clinical trials. It was tough. As well, most patients don't know generic drug names and/or regimens their on. Fast forward to today, there's technologies that allow us to aggregate our medical records (partly motivated by the notion of Population Health and the new Healthcare system) and as well a robust clinicaltrials.gov site that makes it easy to search.
Kumar Thangudu
@fotoflo This product and every time we make research more accessible makes us a utility to the chronically ill.
joshua bradley
As someone with the same autoimmune as Kumar, learning that no one will ever care about or know more about your health than you creates a difficult position when nothing is written for you to understand—this could be a great resource for those that are sick and their loved ones.
Kumar Thangudu
@airjoshb Did you find any research articles that were particularly helpful when first diagnosed with UC or was it all inaccessible from a readability standpoint. Most research is purposely written for other researchers in the field.
joshua bradley
@datarade My case has been pretty extreme so it has left me with more questions than answers unfortunately. Funny enough, I today finished writing an article about health concepts that really shifted my thinking in 2015 on Medium. For specific research, my inflammation, particularly CRP levels have been off the charts high with no explanation and no treatment had really brought them under control. This paper on targeting mitochondrial health, Interleukin levels and NLRP3 http://bmcmedicine.biomedcentral... combined with one that I can't seem to find right now connecting CRP inflammation with Interleukin levels led me to design a treatment that had a massive effect on my daily health as well as reduced my CRP levels by 80%.
Kumar Thangudu
@airjoshb Sadly and ironically, I don't know what you mean by any of that. Googling aggressively.
joshua bradley
@datarade this is pretty deep-dive stuff and most people dealing with IBD would likely never find themselves there, but it was the clearest example to me of research that I had to dig into heavily to find a way to address some of what was going on with my health and got results from those efforts. Overall, my experience leads me to believe that those with IBD have severely damaged (or depleted) mitochondrial function and getting that back on track can help tremendously.
Kumar Thangudu
@airjoshb in layman's terms how do I gain mitochondrial function back?
Gee Ranasinha
Great idea. Are there plans for support in other languages than English?
Kumar Thangudu
@kexino Could you clarify your question? Do you mean the output summary or the article you put in? (I'd actually be curious to see research papers in languages other than English.)
Gee Ranasinha
@datarade Yes, to have the output summary in other languages.
Kumar Thangudu
@kexino Ooh. not sure. Depends on the output language. What languages were you interested in?
Gee Ranasinha
@datarade French and German.
Kumar Thangudu
@kexino if you plan on those languages, simply email me kumar@hdphealth.com and let us know. We'll do what we can to push it out in German or French as per your request.
Akshay Patel
Love the idea of making this information more accessible. For years, have waited to see medical systems translate medical/lab results in a similar way. For instance, give patients the cholesterol numbers but explain what that means in a real world way that doesn't require a provider explanation or a Google search later.
Kumar Thangudu
@mrakshaypatel Oooh. One of my favorite research articles that came out recently on cholesterol and eggs was really intriguing. Here it is: https://www.sciencedaily.com/rel...
Akshay Patel
@datarade Thx. Actually a topic I've specifically wondered about and an opportunity to try the Summarizer. I particularly like that you can subscribe to a topic like Diabetes.
Kumar Thangudu
@mrakshaypatel 1 Billion of the 10 billion patient recruitment slots on ClinicalTrials.gov are for Diabetes. Diabetes is a huge issue in the USA. In my opinion we should develop drugs for this population AND we should fix our flawed food policy. I think Robert Lustig, a pediatric endocrinologist at UCSF puts it best: “Ascribing personal responsibility to the obese individual is not a rational argument for an eminently practical reason: it fails to advance any efforts to change it. The obesity pandemic is due to our altered biochemistry, which is a result of our altered environment.”
Kumar Thangudu
@mrakshaypatel are you interested in type 1 or type 2 diabetes?
Akshay Patel
@datarade Being of South Asian descent, Type 2. A number of my family members have been diagnosed with it. That study population is bigger than I could have imagined.
orliesaurus
Now this sounds like something I would definitely recommend to friends! Great idea and a real world use-case!
Kumar Thangudu
@orliesaurus Curious, what conditions are you most interested in as far as medical research?
Kumar Thangudu
@orliesaurus They say developers usually lack Vitamin D. At some point we'll have to add something or another about that.
orliesaurus
@datarade That is true, I used to take some vitamin D through capsules once or twice a week to be on the safe side! but now that I live in Texas, I get plenty of sun :D
orliesaurus
@datarade everything that has to do with chronic pain that has developed as a result from bad habits at work
Hiten Shah
Make sense of complex lingo that's in research paper. This is awesome. I used to have to Google a bunch to help me understand some of the medical research out there, especially when someone is sick and needs some clarity. Now I can use this!
Catherine Jue
Do you have plans for users to communicate with their summarizers, in case they need clarification around a bullet point or around a specific section of their research paper?
Kumar Thangudu
@juecd_ We don't have plans but the user feedback might point us in that general direction. ;)
Bryna Corcoran
I shared this with my husband, he is a microbiologist and a professor. He could use something like this as a learning tool for undergraduates, PLUS he can use it as a way for them to keep up to date (contributing to the community, subscribing to new research) as well. Great idea!
Kumar Thangudu
@brynatweets That's awesome. We'd love to connect with him actually and get his feedback. He can email us directly: team@hdphealth.com Maybe we can hire some of his students. :) :)
Cem Kozinoglu
Great idea, know the founders a while now and they are rock solid team.
Mikaela Stamas
This is perfect! I just ran across a complicated medical article last week that I couldn’t understand, I’m going to submit it now!
Ian Thiel
Really excited about this. I love how this not only demystifies medical research for the layhuman, but also exposes med school PhDs and researchers to the latest and greatest in relevant science.
Helen Crozier
Thanks for hunting this! Wow...
Howcrio Burley
Finally a product that solves real problems. Great job Kumar and Brian! I look forward to learning more about Lupus through your product.
Mark Moriarty
This is excellent. It's such a shame that most papers are inaccessible or completely missed due to lack of time. Thanks for sharing!
Halle Tecco
excited to see if this works!
Promedic Site
ProMedic.com.ua : наша миссия - исцеление людей Добро пожаловать на сайт ProMedic.com.ua - всеукраинский интернет-портал, предоставляющий бесплатную информацию о лекарствах! Цель нашего проекта - помочь людям сохранить здоровье и физическую активность на долгие-долгие годы. Вместе с ProMedic вы сможете оставаться молодыми даже в глубокой старости! Высшая награда для сотрудников компании «ПроМедик» - ваша улыбка, с которой вы встречаете новый день, радуясь ощущению силы, бодрости, энергии, наполняющей каждую клеточку тела. Доверяйте только профессионалам! Медицинский интернет-портал ProMedic.com.ua создан для того, чтобы вы могли выбрать и приобрести необходимые лекарственные препараты, не слушая ничьих неквалифицированных мнений и неграмотных советов. Вебсайт готов предоставить вам базу данных о зарегистрированных 24 000 товарных позиций с актуальными ценами во всех украинских аптеках. Каждый сотрудник нашей команды - первоклассный специалист, настоящий эксперт в своём деле. Мы реализуем свою профессиональную деятельность в фармацевтической сфере с высочайшим качеством и огромным удовольствием. Наша команда не снижает стандарты ни при каких условиях, выполняя работу на совесть. Мы ценим репутацию нашей компании «ПроМедик» и поэтому стремимся к совершенствованию во всех направлениях своей практики. Вы можете полностью доверять нам! Мы знаем, что для заболевшего человека любая деталь имеет значение, поэтому тщательно следим: • чтобы интересная и полезная вам информация о лекарствах регулярно обновлялась; • чтобы поиск препаратов в аптечных учреждениях был максимально оперативным и доступным; • чтобы качество предоставляемых услуг оставалось на достойном уровне и вызывало у вас желание пользоваться нашим сайтом постоянно. Проект «ПроМедик» является полностью независимым и самостоятельным интернет-сервисом, т.к. не принадлежит ни одному из субъектов фармацевтического рынка Украины. А это означает, что мы предоставляем нашим клиентам абсолютно достоверную информацию о препаратах и ценах на лекарственную продукцию. Команда интернет-портала ProMedic.com.ua - это коллектив единомышленников, твёрдо убеждённых в том, что только качественные медикаменты, полученные пациентом вовремя, - ключи к его здоровью. Принципы работы нашего интернет-сервиса Вам надоели длинные очереди в аптеках? Вы устали от навязчивой телерекламы, которая предлагает совершенно не то, что нужно? Ищете качественные фармпрепараты по выгодной цене? Сервис «ПроМедик» поможет вам легко справиться со всеми этими проблемами! Наша справочная система предоставляет населению Украины следующие важнейшие сведения: • адреса и телефоны аптек всей страны; • наличие в аптечном ассортименте лекарств, биодобавок и косметических средств, которые вам требуются; • оптимальные цены на все препараты; • акции в аптечных учреждениях. У нас вы всегда сможете: ❖ Прочитать точные и подробные инструкции по применению медикаментов, ознакомиться с отзывами о них, поделиться собственным мнением с другими потребителями. ❖ Получить информацию о фармакологических новинках, уже прошедших процедуру государственного лицензирования. ❖ Подобрать конкретные средства медицинского и косметического назначения даже в том случае, когда вы не уверены в их правильном написании. ❖ Узнать о вариантах замены определённого препарата на его более дешёвые аналоги, и сэкономить деньги, выбрав наилучшее предложение. ❖ Изучить перечень детских лекарственных средств и приобрести эффективные медикаменты соответственно возрасту ребёнка. ❖ Найти именно ту аптеку, где будут в наличии все лекарства, БАДы и витамины из вашего рецепта и в которой можно зарезервировать/купить даже самый редкий препарат. Хотим особо отметить, что материалы, представленные в информационной базе сервиса «ПроМедик», написаны простым языком, понятным не только медработникам и фармацевтам, но и рядовым потребителям. ProMedic.com.ua работает для вас! Мы регулярно уточняем сведения о наличии медикаментов в аптеках страны. Мы постоянно обновляем данные о специальных предложениях, скидках и акциях во всех аптечных учреждениях. Мы систематически сообщаем о медицинских и фармацевтических инновациях. Вся деятельность медицинского интернет-портала ProMedic.com.ua направлена на благо каждого украинца. Наша миссия - возвращать людям здоровье, а порой и жизнь. И мы будем всегда верны этому призванию!