Questions about AI and cancer care
AI can help patients organize medical records, build a clearer timeline of their care, identify questions to discuss with their doctors, and examine information from multiple perspectives. These tools can help patients become more informed participants in their care, but they do not replace an oncology team or medical diagnosis.
What is precision oncology?
Precision oncology uses specific information about a person’s cancer, including biomarkers and genetic or molecular characteristics, to help guide treatment decisions. Steve Brown’s work focuses on making this kind of personalized information easier for more patients to understand and use with their medical teams.
Can AI help uncover a missed cancer diagnosis?
AI cannot guarantee that cancer will be detected, but it may help organize scattered records, surface patterns, and identify information that deserves another look. Any possible diagnosis must still be evaluated and confirmed by qualified medical professionals.
Who is Steve Brown, and what is CureWise?
Steve Brown is a Stanford-trained physicist and computer scientist who previously served as chief AI officer for Peter Diamandis. After his own aggressive blood cancer was missed for months, he began building CureWise to help people with cancer organize their medical information and become more informed partners in their care.
For Tony
Last week, Tony Sandow, a dear family friend who had known me since birth, died from cancer.
As a kid, Tony introduced me to National Geographic and to live music, two doorways into a larger world that helped shape my own life. He and his wife Pam were lifelong adventurers who traveled to more than 80 countries.
This spring, they returned from Uzbekistan. Tony had developed what seemed like an ordinary sore throat. It was a rare and aggressive cancer. Before surgery, he did what I remember him doing when I was a child: he picked up his guitar and sang.
This episode is for Tony, for the larger world he opened to me, and for the example he set: keep the music going when times are hard, and keep exploring for as long as you can.
If someone you care about is navigating cancer, or helping a loved one make sense of a diagnosis, please share this conversation with them.
Onward,
Timothy Wheeler
Co-host, Before the Cure
More on Steve’s story: The ASCO Post · Forbes