by Mike Critelli, 

Last year, Dr. Gary Welch and Colleen McGuire of Silver Fern Healthcare joined our MakeUsWell Network. Their tag line is “Human Understanding Unlocked.” Their business is focused on addressing a fundamental issue we must address if we are to have viable healthcare and health insurance systems and to have global competitiveness across a variety of fronts.

The United States throws more money at health and healthcare than any other nation in the world, and achieves horrible outcomes. We have the same pathology in our public education system as well, but this blog will just focus on the issue of health improvement.

When I was growing up, the way we thought about health was that we “got sick” through no fault of our own, either because of an infectious disease like pneumonia or a gastrointestinal condition from eating contaminated food. One of my grandmothers had diabetes and had one leg amputated below the knee, but I did not understand what caused it. At the time, we thought about diseases and illnesses as conditions that happened to us and over which we had little or no control. 

There were exceptions. We knew about alcoholism, drug addiction, and lung diseases from excessive smoking. I had uncles, aunts and cousins who had alcohol dependency or died of lung cancer. But we did not focus on obesity or the metabolic disorders to which it contributed. Hypertension, coronary artery disease, Type 2 diabetes, and cancers of our gastro-intestinal tract were not as common as they are today.

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by Mike Critelli, 

Introduction

Zoonotic diseases are infections transmitted from animals to humans. These diseases pose a significant global health threat, as evidenced by past outbreaks such as the Ebola virus, SARS, and bird flu outbreaks. With rapid globalization and increased human-animal interactions affecting disease transmission patterns, innovative solutions to detect and prevent zoonotic diseases are urgently needed. 

Artificial Intelligence (AI) has emerged as a powerful tool that can help monitor, predict, and mitigate the spread of zoonotic infections through advanced data analytics, machine learning, and automation. AI can be leveraged in the early detection, monitoring, and prevention of zoonotic disease transmission.  

AI in Early Detection of Zoonotic Diseases

One critical aspect of controlling zoonotic diseases is early detection. AI plays a pivotal role in analyzing vast amounts of data to identify patterns and predict potential outbreaks before they escalate. Several approaches illustrate how AI contributes to early detection:

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by Mike Critelli, 

At MakeUsWell, we strive to educate users on how to improve their ability to self-manage their health and more intelligently partner with health professionals. We emphasize partnering with knowledgeable professionals, not replacing them.

Artificial intelligence can help us manage our health, when we assess food additives, over-the-counter medications, supplements, and adverse interactions among them. We inevitably have to address how to evaluate the underlying research. 

Identifying peer-reviewed research from authoritative sources in reputable journals is not enough. Research can fail at several levels—even with the elaborate peer review processes. 

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by Mike Critelli, 

Today, we are discussing one big health management issue. As consumers of foods, beverages, over-the-counter medications, and a wide range of supplements, how can AI aid in the process of ensuring that we are putting the right things into our bodies at the right time and in the right ways?  

The first priority is to make sure that, whether we are using human intelligence, AI, or a combination of both, we are using authoritative sources. Any AI platform focused on health-related advice also has to be based firmly on authoritative, unassailable sources. Uncontrolled use of, or faith in, AI can easily lead users to sources with credible, but wrong or unsupported, information. Researchers are held to a high standard in peer-reviewed articles. AI’s output must draw on the same sources and be held to the same standards as humans.

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by Mike Critelli, 

Over the past month, the MakeUsWell Network has welcomed Dr. Garry Welch and Colleen McGuire, a married couple who have formed a company called Silver Fern Healthcare. Silver Fern’s mission is to use the best available evidence to identify the psychological and sociological factors that prevent patients from effectively managing their chronic diseases.

They have particularly focused more recently in addressing the root cause of many chronic diseases, the obesity crisis. Obesity not only contributes to chronic diseases, but, as research has demonstrated, it made those with the SARS Cov-2 virus more likely to be hospitalized or die. The inflammation caused by obesity has also been linked to cancer by the CDC because of the faster cell growth required to compensate for insulin resistance.

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