Yours, Verily

Alphabet's Life Science division debuts a new name

By

Tzen Szen

on December 18, 2015 1.10pm

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Meet Verily, the latest division under Alphabet's umbrella.

The word means "truly" or "certainly". It dates back to the Middle English of the 14th century and does occasionally appear in the King James Bible. However, in terms of common use, it hasn't been used since... well, quite a long time ago.

Verily is a life sciences company that graduated from Google's moonshot factory, Google[x]. They started out as the life sciences team in Google[x], working on a smart contact lens that detects blood glucose levels in 2012, eventually spinning-off as an independant company.

Based on their new website, Verily is focused on "using technology to better understand health, as well as prevent, detect, and manage disease".

As a medical student fascinated by technology, this resonates with me, hard. It really does excite me.

Verily's mission involves moving healthcare from reactive to proactive/preventative, from generalised to personalised. They want to make health more about being continuous rather than episodic. And with a diverse, multidisciplinary team, it sure looks like they stand a good chance of doing just that.

A single discipline isn't going to cure disease

Verily is led by their CEO, Andy Conrad. Formerly the chief scientific officer of LabCorp, he is a cell biologist and has co-founded the National Genetics Institute, which developed the first cost-effective test to screen for HIV in blood supply.

His team at Verily is truly a multidisciplinary one. It comprises of engineers, doctors, scientists, and statistics gurus, with a single mission of improving healthcare. To better understand the bigger picture, they even have a philosopher on their team to figure out the "why" of what people do.

To detect disease earlier, understand it better, and intervene in the course of the disease more precisely, Verily has already started with their long journey. For example, they've started to develop a contact lens with an embedded glucose sensor to detect glucose levels in tears. The Baseline Study is currently ongoing to better recognise what a healthy person is. Recently, they've also filed a patent for a "needle-free blood draw" system.

Health isn't and shouldn't be about the yearly doctor visits. 23andMe (another company that I'm a huge admirer of) CEO, Anne Wojcicki hit the nail on the head when she said, "Health is about what you do every single day”.

We don't even know what being "healthy" means yet. We think that as long we aren't feeling ill, we are healthy. That sure isn't the case. How many times have doctors found tumours in patients when they weren't actually looking for them?

The healthcare industry hasn't fully embraced technology as an equal in solving the largest problems we are currently facing. Even if the industry does, more often than not, it takes ages for the tech to reach physicians and patients. And rightly so, for a couple of reasons.

As an industry that involves human life, the margin of error is incredibly tiny. Should the technology that we use to help patients fail, the consequences are unforgiving. Bureaucracy surrounding the industry as a whole also plays a part with limiting innovation. A lot of the time, we are focused on what we can't do instead of what we can - we find more reasons for saying "no", instead of more reasons for saying "yes".

We find more reasons for saying "no"

One fine day in the near future, I hope to look back and chuckle to myself at how we faced the problems that are plaguing healthcare. Verily represents an ideal of hope - that we can have world in which technology and life sciences are in congruence with one another to reveal new truths about health and disease.

And with a practical and real approach to scientific development, that world verily looks more like reality instead of a dream.

The State of Virtual Reality (Late 2015)

Good VR is finally here

By

Tzen Szen

on December 17, 2015 10.20am

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Back when I was a kid, virtual reality (VR) was basically fictional.

It was tacky, gimmicky even. It was something that you'd file under "nice to have".

VR came as different forms as seen in sci-fi movies like The Matrix or Tron. Not everyone had the access to games or toys like Battlezone of the View-Master. While considered primitive by today's standards, Battlezone and the old View-Master blew people away due to the immersiveness of their experiences at that time.

Good VR is here

Enter 2015, VR is back from a hiatus; from ’90s futurism to one the largest attractions in tech world. It's been about 4 years since Palmer Luckey built the prototype that would eventually become the Oculus Rift in his parents’ garage in 2011 (the coolest things always start out in a garage, don't they?). It's been three and a half years since that prototype was unveiled at E3 by John Carmack, jumpstarting everything.

VR is a platform that stimulates the senses, notably sight, touch, and hearing. Being part of a research project involving the Oculus Rift in September, I was impressed by what I experienced. The programmes that I tried out felt real. The need to reach out to touch the planets and stars that surrounded me was completely natural. Trying out a rollercoaster programme, my head swayed naturally from left to right as the rollercoaster made sharp turns and loops. The slight feeling of nausea also came with the experience.

The Google Cardboard that I tried out impressed me just as much. Essentially just a piece of cardboard with some lenses and a magnet, the experience that I got out of it was astoundingly immersive for something costing the fraction of the price of the Oculus Rift. A combination of decent haptic feedback, visuals, and audio allows Google's take on VR to punch way above its weight.

VR isn't just a gimmick anymore. It's not something that you will see and go, "That's something nice to have!". It's the real deal.

That's a reason why the largest names in tech are competing to have a say in the VR market; Facebook, Google, Samsung, Sony, and HTC are lining up to show the rest of the world what VR is capable of.

Even non-tech companies are jumping on the VR bandwagon. The NY Times have recently released a mobile app for VR, while also sending print subscribers a free Google Cardboard. Mattel, one of the largest toy companies in the world, have partnered with Google and National Geographic to release a new, VR enabled, View-Master for kids.

We are going to be spoilt for choice with the amount of VR headsets currently in market or about to enter the market in early 2016. Have a look at the graph below and you can see that they come in a variety of price points. This is based heavily on whether they are powered by a desktop or by mobile phones.

The applications of VR are virtually limitless. We've already seen it being used in training pilots and military training. But what about other industries? For example, can we improve surgical training by using a VR headset with haptic feedback? How about better visualising medical imagery using VR for diagnostics and surgical planning? Can children see other parts of the world in just their classroom without having to travel there?

VR is difficult to explain in words

It is thrilling to see where the applications of VR will take us. However, one of its largest challenges is to actually tell people how an experience with VR is like. It is notoriously difficult to express in words.

I can write a 2000 word essay about it and you won't even know what it really feels like. Until you try it out for yourself, it's all just words.

But yes, for now, good VR is finally here. A question that should be asked is whether it will be here to stay.

And my answer to that would be: I certainly hope it does.