TOBY SHAPSHAK: How AI is making the world a better place
Millions of people go blind every year from a preventable eye disease caused by diabetes. Called diabetic retinopathy, it is devastating to its sufferers and takes an ophthalmologist to diagnose. This is a particular problem in a country like India, which has a huge population and a high prevalence of diabetes but not enough ophthalmologists. "India is set to emerge as the diabetic capital of the world. According to the WHO, 31.7m people were affected by diabetes mellitus in India in the year 2000," says a 2016 study in the Indian Journal of Ophthalmology. "This figure is estimated to rise to 79.4m by 2030, the largest number in any nation in the world. Almost two-thirds of all type-2 and almost all type-1 diabetics are expected to develop diabetic retinopathy.""We were able to take something core to Google — classifying cats and dogs and faces — and apply it to another sort of problem," says Lily Peng, the Google lead running the project, who is also a physician and biomedical engi...
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