14 DAY TRIAL // Cancer is one of the biggest problems of the world we're living in, and Microsoft, whose founder is one of the planet's top philanthropists, is one of those trying not necessarily to find a cure, but at least contribute to the work being done in this direction.
And now a Microsoft researcher says there are signs that, in 10 years from today, technology will evolve so much that it will finally be able to solve this huge problem of the globe's population.
Jasmin Fisher, senior researcher at Microsoft Research in Cambridge, UK, and research group leader at the University of Cambridge’s department of biochemistry, has not offered too many details on how the disease will be tackled, but she has explained that cloud computing will be the core of the technology that will allow bigger data processing in order to find a cure for cancer.
“Ten years from now, cancer will be a solved problem thanks to interdisciplinary, ground-breaking approaches that will enable researchers and clinicians to compute driver mechanisms of cancer, as well as to understand, detect, diagnose and treat patients at an individual level. I believe executable biology will play a key role in tackling this enormous challenge,” she says.
More diseases to be “solved” too
However, the technological evolution won't address just cancer. Fisher explains that the very same cloud computing-based tech can be used for other diseases too.
“One of the main advances that we’ll see in health and well-being in 2016 will be the usage of innovative interdisciplinary technologies designed to extend and improve the lives of patients with complicated diseases,” she goes on to say.
While this is an optimistic prediction, it's certainly good news to see tech giants like Microsoft getting involved into medical research, especially because cancer continues to be one of the main causes of death across the world. In the United Kingdom, in 2012 alone, 161,823 people died from different types of cancer, with the mortality rate reaching 168.6 people per 100,000 of the population.