WEBVTT 00:00:01.880 --> 00:00:05.840 Data and Medicine 00:00:09.200 --> 00:00:13.020 This is really a magic era for software. We can use computers now to 00:00:13.530 --> 00:00:19.990 simulate so many different things. So every person has a DNA sequence that's 3 billion 00:00:19.990 --> 00:00:24.280 letters long, that's a really long sequence! And in order for me to study it, I can't do 00:00:24.280 --> 00:00:29.320 it by hand. I need to use computer programming in order to go through this code that's 3 00:00:29.320 --> 00:00:34.180 billion letters long in order to figure out how your DNA code is associated with disease. 00:00:34.180 --> 00:00:39.149 My interests are actually right at the interface between biology and computer science. There 00:00:39.149 --> 00:00:47.289 is a huge database that contains all known organisms so humans, monkeys, mice, viruses, 00:00:47.289 --> 00:00:53.569 bacteria. Usually now if a doctor is worried about you having an infection, based on your 00:00:53.569 --> 00:01:00.519 age and where your symptoms are, if it's in your ear, your heart, or your brain, they 00:01:00.519 --> 00:01:06.910 try to make a best guess as to what type of infection you have. Then they'll send off 00:01:06.910 --> 00:01:12.860 tests specifically for those bugs. So if they think you have strep throat, they send off 00:01:12.860 --> 00:01:18.010 the strep test. But the type of testing that we do, since we can essentially test for any 00:01:18.010 --> 00:01:24.180 type of infection with a single test so we don't have to have a bias going into the testing 00:01:24.180 --> 00:01:31.550 saying we think it's X, Y, or Z we just say let's see what's in there. A Cottage Grove 00:01:31.550 --> 00:01:36.050 teenager now says he's taking one life one day at a time after being critically ill from 00:01:36.050 --> 00:01:42.510 a mysterious illness. Mary Jolla has his story and details into new DNA sequencing that helped 00:01:42.510 --> 00:01:50.090 solve a medical mystery. It's spring and like any other teenager, Joshua Osborn can't 00:01:50.090 --> 00:01:55.480 be stuck indoors. Josh: "I feel wonderful today. It's 80 degrees." It's a welcome change 00:01:55.480 --> 00:02:03.890 from last summer, here in the hospital and in a coma. His symptoms began last April with 00:02:03.890 --> 00:02:09.360 fevers and headaches and he only got worse. Clark: "And he needed to be hospitalized." 00:02:09.360 --> 00:02:14.990 Josh may not remember the hospital stay but his dad, Clark does. They tested for everything 00:02:14.990 --> 00:02:21.970 that they knew. They tested for viruses and bacteria and ultimately he had a brain scan 00:02:21.970 --> 00:02:29.640 and two or three spinal taps. He had all these crazy tubes. I remember that weekend when 00:02:29.640 --> 00:02:35.360 they were doing it, it was so intense it was like he was going to die that week. We got 00:02:35.360 --> 00:02:40.940 Josh's samples from his doctor, because his doctor was giving up. They had no idea. They 00:02:40.940 --> 00:02:46.390 sunk millions of dollars into this kid and they have used hundreds of test. Hundreds-- 00:02:46.390 --> 00:02:52.270 sent to the CDC, sent to multiple labs, and they couldn't get an answer back. And they, 00:02:52.270 --> 00:02:57.230 I mean so much money right, and they turned to us and they were like, "We need to know 00:02:57.230 --> 00:03:11.520 what it is." So this is where we have the gene sequencers. We got a small amount of 00:03:11.520 --> 00:03:17.240 Josh's cerebral spinal fluid which is the fluid that bathes the brain, with very powerful 00:03:17.240 --> 00:03:24.569 computer algorithms we took out all the human sequences that were present in the data. And 00:03:24.569 --> 00:03:31.410 then searched all the non-human sequences that we got against a giant database that 00:03:31.410 --> 00:03:39.739 contains gene sequences of all known organisms. And very quickly we saw that the sequences 00:03:39.739 --> 00:03:47.110 were all for a particular organism that Josh likely contracted when he visited Puerto Rico 00:03:47.110 --> 00:03:53.959 about nine months before. And fortunately, that organism, it's a bacterium. And there 00:03:53.959 --> 00:04:00.080 is a very straightforward treatment for it: penicillin. The doctor gave him the drugs 00:04:00.080 --> 00:04:06.459 that same day and he was fine 24 hours later. All I can tell you is that, I'm happy to be 00:04:06.459 --> 00:04:18.690 alive and I have dreams and I'm looking forward to accomplishing them. Data analysis is changing 00:04:18.690 --> 00:04:24.970 all medicine. It's not just changing how diseases are diagnosed. Data is changing how we discover 00:04:24.970 --> 00:04:30.770 cures to diseases. And even after a cure is known, data is used for delivering medicine 00:04:30.770 --> 00:04:36.270 to patients, for example, to fight polio in Africa by distributing vaccines to everybody 00:04:36.270 --> 00:04:42.270 who needs it. The magic of polio is finding all the kids and getting them to have the 00:04:42.270 --> 00:04:51.520 vaccine three times. And so we're taking satellite photographs and using visual analysis to figure 00:04:51.520 --> 00:04:57.780 out what the population is. And so we can look and see if we're giving out a certain 00:04:57.780 --> 00:05:03.970 amount of vaccine are we really reaching all the kids? And amazingly what we found, on 00:05:03.970 --> 00:05:10.090 the boundaries between political areas there are various settlements that one group thought 00:05:10.090 --> 00:05:16.780 that the other group was taking care of. We also can take the phone that has the GPS tracking 00:05:16.780 --> 00:05:22.350 and when they come back at the end of the day, plug it in, and see where they've been 00:05:22.350 --> 00:05:28.690 every minute. And that's making all the difference because just getting coverage up from 80% 00:05:28.690 --> 00:05:34.050 of kids to 90% of kids--that's the difference between success and failure. And literally 00:05:34.050 --> 00:05:40.460 the software that lets us look at the movements of the teams, looks at the satellite maps, 00:05:40.460 --> 00:05:45.750 gathers all the statistics together and tracks this thing, that's what's going to make this 00:05:45.750 --> 00:05:52.180 the second disease we finally get rid of. So it's systems thinking, and the magic of 00:05:52.180 --> 00:05:55.040 software are really at the center.