What can Quantum Computing do to Healthcare?

What can Quantum Computing do to Healthcare?

A leap from bits to qubits:  entirely new horizons for healthcare. Quantum computing might bring supersonic drug design, in silico clinical trials with virtual humans simulated ‘live’, full-speed whole genome sequencing and analytics, the achievement of predictive health, or the security of medical data via quantum uncertainty. Jaw-dropping, isn’t it?

Now, Whats Quantum Computing 

As Shohini Gose quantum physicist says in her TED talk, quantum physics describes the behavior of atoms and fundamental particles, like electrons or photons. A quantum computer operates by controlling the behavior of these particles, which is very different from the way our traditional computers work. This means qubits have fluid identities or signify certain percentages and probabilities between two endpoints.

·      Supersonic drug design

Developing pharmaceuticals through lengthy and costly clinical trials is definitely passéd scientists and pharma companies started to experiment with alternative ways, such as using artificial intelligence, human organs-on-chips or in silico trials, to speed up the process and make drug discovery and development more cost-effective.

Running searches on quantum computers could unfold looking through all possible molecules with unimaginable speed, drug target tests conducted in every potential cell model or in silico human tissues and networks in the shortest amount of time possible. This would open the gates to find the antidote to diseases we never dreamt about before: Alzheimer’s? Various types of cancer? The possibilities seem to become endless.

·       Reaching the age of in silico clinical trials

In silico clinical trials mean that no humans, no animals, not even a single cell is required for testing a particular therapy, treatment option, or drug, yet its impact can be perfectly charted. It means an individualized computer simulation used in the development or regulatory evaluation of a medicinal product, device, or intervention. Quantum computing could greatly advance the building of ‘virtual humans’ and complete simulations

·       Sequencing and analyzing DNA full speed

The last two decades saw radical changes in genetics and genomics. It took more than 15 years to crack the code of the human DNA: the Human Genome Project started in 1990, cost billions of dollars and could present its final results in 2006. As a contrast, by now, there are more than 2,000 genetic tests for human conditions – and direct-to-consumer genetic testing companies make it even possible to order them online. These tests enable patients to learn their genetic risks for disease and also help healthcare professionals to diagnose illness. Even whole-genome sequencing is possible for less than a thousand dollars . Source: sciblogs.co.nz

·       Making patients truly the point of care

Currently, we are able to measure a gazillion of health data about ourselves – but we know that it’s still not that widespread. In the future, health sensors, wearables, and tiny medical gadgets could send zettabytes of data about patients into the cloud. Quantum computers will be able to make sense of these huge amounts of data, including bits and pieces of health information. Moreover, surveillance of patients through connected sensory systems might render physical hospitals useless – and truly make patients the point of care.

Source: www.medium.com

·       Arriving at the perfect decision support system

Quantum computing would take that to a whole new level and even augment it with special skills. What if such computers could offer perfect decision support for doctors? They could skim through all the studies at once, they could find correlations and causations that the human eye would never find, and it might stumble upon diagnoses or treatment options that the human doctor could have never figured out by themselves.
Source: www.medium.com

·       Creating the safest medical data systems ever

In her TED talk, Shohini Ghose mentioned the use of quantum uncertainty for encryption as one of the most probable applications of quantum computing. She believes it could be used for creating private keys for encrypting messages sent from one location to another – so that hackers could not copy the key perfectly due to quantum uncertainty. They would have to break the laws of quantum physics to hack such keys. Imagine that level of security with regards to sensitive medical information: electronic health records, genetic and genomic data, or any other private information that the health system generates about our bodies.
Source: www.wired.com