Tag: Clinic

Cleveland Clinic Gets Its Own IBM Quantum Processor For Advanced Biomedical Research

This appears to be the year that IBM’s Quantum Computing program reaches the tipping point. IBM and the Cleveland Clinic Foundation just announced the first deployment of an onsite, private sector, IBM-managed quantum computer in the United States. However, beyond the placement of a 127-qubit IBM Eagle quantum processor in a cafeteria at Cleveland Clinic’s main campus, this announcement signals a major leap forward for quantum computing applications.

Of course, the most immediate question is, why install a quantum computer in a cafeteria? Although this may seem like a frivolous question, it gets to a major point of this article. The IBM Eagle class quantum processor has been installed in a highly visible location in the Cleveland Clinic so that biomedical researchers and physicians can start thinking about the most productive ways to use this resource. These are very early days for the development of quantum computing applications, so installing the IBM Eagle quantum processor in the cafeteria, visited daily by nearly everyone working at the Cleveland Clinic, seems like an extremely creative way of keeping the machine ever present in the minds of people working at the facility.

Dr Lara Jehi, who became Cleveland Clinic’s first Chief Research Information Officer in 2020, said that there are many areas of interest in medical research with computational ceilings that block further advances. Quantum processing may help break through those ceilings. Researchers at Cleveland Clinic, working with IBM data scientists, combed through the possible avenues for research, discipline by discipline, to identify the projects most likely to bear fruit when matched to quantum processing’s current capabilities. “Quantum is still a nascent technology,” said Jehi.

Jehi divides the current quantum-based biomedical research into two broad groups: quantum chemistry (drug discovery) and quantum machine learning (ML). The quantum chemistry projects focus on finding new drugs or new purposes for existing drugs. These projects are staggeringly complex due to the sheer size of the data sets that need processing. The core tasks in these projects are simulating cell site binding by the candidate drug molecules. These problems have a very large number of dimensions, and quantum processing is known to be extremely well suited to these sorts of problems.

Current quantum chemistry research projects at Cleveland Clinic include:

  • Identifying protein targets by mapping the complex interplay of proteins and solving the foundational challenge of form-changing protein surfaces in structural biology.
  • Accelerating the prediction of molecular docking between drug candidates and proteins.
  • Exploring protein-drug interactions and protein ligand binding through quantum chemistry algorithms to accelerate drug discovery.

Quantum-assisted ML, an extension of classical artificial intelligence (AI) techniques, seeks to find ways to simplify massive data sets, which consist of patient data from cohorts as large as 150,000 patients, by winnowing the features or dimensions of the data sets that are important to a specific research problem from the features or dimensions that are not important. Current quantum ML research projects at Cleveland Clinic include:

  • Developing a quantum-based physician scheduling algorithm that efficiently and most effectively takes advantage of a physician’s time, expertise, and resources.
  • Exploring the assembly of large genomes through preliminary benchmarking studies to develop a foundational technology for discovery and translation of natural products.
  • Creating optimized radiation therapy treatment plans for individual patients based on patient data.
  • Developing a deeper understanding of cardiovascular risk for non-cardiac surgery patients using perioperative morbidity and mortality data to improve clinical and patient outcomes.
  • Developing optimized clinical trials with accelerated timelines while reducing the number of trial participants and associated costs.

Cleveland Clinic has additional quantum chemistry and quantum ML research projects in the planning stage. “It’s not just about quantum processing being faster; it’s about doing what has been impossible” said Jehi.

IBM currently has six quantum computing centers located around the globe. The quantum processor installation at Cleveland Clinic is the first to be exclusively devoted to biomedical and healthcare research, which is the focus of one of four IBM quantum processing working groups. The other three quantum processing working groups are focused on high-energy physics, high-performance computing (HPC), and finance. IBM is partnering with different companies and institutions for each of these quantum processing working groups.

Aparna Prabhakar, Vice President, IBM Quantum Partner & Alliances, says that IBM has been partnering with Cleveland Clinic for a while now. According to Prabhakar, the goal of the 10-year Cleveland Clinic-IBM Discovery Accelerator partnership, which was announced in 2021, is two-fold. One goal is to identify real-world problems that may benefit from quantum processing. The second goal is to find ways to make the unique abilities of quantum processing available to researchers working in various disciplines without requiring them to understand the underlying quantum technology.

These working groups and partnerships help IBM develop the quantum-based programming tools that data scientists and researchers need to attack many challenges in their respective disciplines. These quantum programming tools abstract away the complexities of quantum processing in the same way that high-level programming languages abstract away the machine instructions, registers, and memory spaces of conventional von Neumann processor architectures.

IBM announced the 127-qubit Eagle quantum processor a year and a half ago. This is the quantum processor that’s been installed at the Cleveland Clinic. At its Quantum Summit late last year, IBM unveiled its 433-qubit Osprey quantum processor and plans to have the first of these processors online by the end of this year. (See “IBM Prepares For Quantum Computing Inflection Point.”) While the company is developing these bigger and faster quantum processors, IBM’s quantum processing working groups are helping to make quantum processing a practical computing tool for multiple disciplines.

Ohio to open a clinic amid growing health concerns over train derailment

The rail company already faces multiple class-action suits from members of the East Palestine community over the incident, which forced residents within roughly a mile radius to evacuate their homes.

Some residents say they have suffered health issues, while others say they have found dead animals, including fish and chicken, in the area. For the most part, those suing the rail company say they that have lost income because of the evacuations, that they were exposed to cancer-causing chemicals and that they no longer feel safe in their homes.

The Environmental Protection Agency classifies vinyl chloride, the chemical that was released, as a carcinogen that can increase one’s risk of liver cancer or damage with routine exposure.

One of the class-action lawsuits alleges that the rail company “discharged more cancer causing Vinyl Chloride into the environment in the course of a week than all industrial emitters combined did in the course of a year” in the U.S.

Norfolk Southern has said it was “unable to comment directly on litigation.” In a public update Thursday, it said that in addition to continuing cleanup work, it was distributing more than $2 million in financial assistance to families and businesses to help with the costs of the evacuation. It also said it was creating a $1 million fund for the community. The company did not immediately respond to a request for further comment Monday.

Ohio to open a clinic amid growing health concerns over train derailment

In an open letter, Shaw promised to stay in the area “as long as it takes to ensure your safety and to help East Palestine recover and thrive.” 

As of Sunday, the EPA had evaluated the indoor air in more than 530 homes in conjunction with Norfolk Southern and had not detected vinyl chloride above levels of concern in any of them. Meanwhile, Gov. Mike DeWine said Thursday that the municipal water was safe to drink, based on the results of sampling and tests done by the EPA, Norfolk Southern and other agencies.

In an apparent bid to demonstrate the water was safe to drink, the state EPA shared a photo on Twitter of agency officials and politicians, including East Palestine Mayor Trent Conaway, “enjoying a glass of clean water.”

It said they were “happy to see good data results that show the water in the village is safe to drink.”

Still, as concerns grow, Tuesday’s clinic will allow residents to get health assessments and have their concerns addressed.

“Last week, I was in East Palestine and listened as many area residents expressed their concerns and fears,” state Health Director Bruce Vanderhoff said in a statement provided by the department. “I heard you, the state heard you, and now the Ohio Department of Health and many of our partner agencies are providing this clinic, where people can come and discuss these vital issues with medical providers.”

The clinic will be at First Church of Christ at 20 W. Martin St. Registered nurses and mental health specialists are expected to be on site. A toxicologist will be either at the clinic or available by phone, the Health Department said in a news release. A mobile unit operated by the Community Action Agency of Columbiana County will also be parked outside the church to accommodate more appointments, it said.

Community members can start scheduling appointments Monday by calling 234-564-7755 or 234-564-7888, the Health Department said.

In a recent letter addressed to Shaw, Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg said Norfolk Southern would need to uphold its stated commitments to those affected by the derailment.

“The people of East Palestine cannot be forgotten, nor can their pain be simply considered the cost of doing business,” he said.

Cleveland Clinic to open its third London facility as Brits flock to private health care


London
CNN
 — 

US team Cleveland Clinic will open up its 3rd London facility this autumn as need for non-public well being treatment booms in the United Kingdom — sparked in huge component by lengthy hold out periods to accessibility therapy on the Nationwide Well being Service (NHS).

The new 13,000-sq. foot facility will present individuals appointments with standard practitioners, diagnostic services like MRI scans and “fast access” to senior physicians, the team said in a statement Wednesday.

“We are fired up to be growing our London footprint with a 3rd location, in the coronary heart of the Metropolis of London,” said Tommaso Falcone, interim CEO of Cleveland Clinic London.

Found in the Moorgate space, the new facility will add to the 184-bed hospital and the 6-floor clinic that the group opened in the upmarket districts of Belgravia and Marylebone in 2021 and 2022 respectively. So considerably, almost 60,000 sufferers have been taken care of at these services.

Cleveland Clinic is a person of several significant personal wellness care providers expanding rapidly in the United Kingdom to preserve up with desire from a substantially broader swathe of the population than at any time prior to.

Also making new British isles facilities this 12 months are HCA Health care — yet another American team — and private healthcare facility group Spire Health care.

The need is being fueled by long hold out instances to accessibility care on the NHS. Though it is one particular of the world’s most effective-identified universal health and fitness systems, it has been left in a condition of crisis following decades of stretched budgets, employees shortages and slipping wages.

At the conclusion of November, a record 7.2 million people in England ended up waiting around for non-urgent medical treatment on the NHS, known as “elective” care. This spans diagnostic tests and scans and treatments this kind of as hip and knee replacements, but also cardiac surgical procedure, cancer cure and neurosurgery.

Figures revealed by the British isles Office environment for Nationwide Studies (ONS) Tuesday confirmed a sharp improve in vacancies in well being and social function amongst November 2022 and January this 12 months.

The ONS info also uncovered pay back for general public sector workers greater a large amount fewer in the fourth quarter of very last calendar year compared to private-sector earnings. These figures have been not modified for inflation, which is outstripping wage expansion.

Responding to the ONS figures, Pat Cullen, the general secretary of the union Royal Faculty of Nursing, said: “It is lower pay out that is contributing to the staffing crisis and in the end impacts on the security of individuals. Nurses are leaving the profession in their droves, with a lot of getting in the same way paid roles in sectors where they’re not accountable for people’s life in a crumbling overall health company.”

Earlier this month, tens of hundreds of nurses and just about 12,000 ambulance employees went on strike around spend and operating conditions in the major walkout in the 75-yr history of the NHS.