Chipmaker Nvidia announced the EGX accelerated computing platform, created to meet the growing demand to perform instantaneous, high-throughput artificial intelligence (AI) at the edge.

WHY IT MATTERS

The platform combines a range range of Nvidia AI computing technologies with the company’s Edge Stack along with Red Hat’s containerization software, called OpenShift, as well as security, networking and storage technologies from Cisco.

The Nvidia Edge Stack connects to major cloud IoT services, and customers can remotely manage their service from Amazon Web Services’ IoT Greengrass or Microsoft Azure IoT Edge.

Accelerated computing platforms designed to provide low-latency AI at the edge — acting in real time on continuous streaming data — could have multiple applications for the healthcare industry.

Among the organizations Nvidia touted as early adopters of the EGX platform is GE Healthcare, and Boston-based non-profit hospital and physicians network Partners Healthcare.

THE TREND

Enthusiasm for AI is high among health executives, according to a January report from Accenture, which also found sufficient staff training and expertise were the most important success factors for AI implementation.

The report also noted operational areas — less likely to cause anxiety among patients and clinicians — are preceding more clinical, life-critical functions in terms of adoption.

ON THE RECORD

“AI is fundamental to achieving precision health and must be pervasively available from the cloud to the edge and directly on medical devices,” Jason Polzin, general manager of MR applications at GE Healthcare, said in a statement.

Polzin noted that Nvidia’s EGX helps GE Healthcare to deliver rapid MR acquisition times, improve image quality and reduce variability by embedding Nvidia T4 graphic processing units (GPUs) directly into GE Healthcare’s medical devices.

“Real-time, critical-care use cases demand AI at the edge,” Polzin continued. “This is why we created our Edison intelligence offering and partnered with NVIDIA to bring AI into our medical devices and Edison edge appliance, and why we are working with ACR AI-LAB to democratize AI.”

The EGX AI edge computing platform could also provide hospitals with AI infrastructure to keep patient data secure, deliver real-time AI and scale to thousands of AI applications needed to improve patient care and reduce the cost of care delivery

“Hospitals are increasingly using AI to predict adverse patient events, support clinical decision-making and operate more efficiently, Keith Dreyer, chief data science officer at Partners Healthcare and associate professor of radiology at Harvard Medical School, said in a statement.

Nathan Eddy is a healthcare and technology freelancer based in Berlin.

Email the writer: nathaneddy@gmail.com

Twitter: @dropdeaded209 

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