The truths – Talk Vietnam

Tran Nguyen Kim Thi is a postdoc majoring in AI usage in medicine at the Huge Kaul Precision Medicine Institute at the University of Alabama in Birmingham (UAB) in the US. She obtained a doctorate in immunology in 2020 with research work on the factors of the immune system that affect chronic lung diseases. Her research found that in patients suffering from uncommon pulmonary fibrosis of unknown origin, their immune systems have a variety of disorders that lead to immune cells attacking their lungs. The damages that accumulate over time turn into hard scarring that replaces normal lung tissue, impairing the lung's air exchange function. “The result of the research has been used by Prof Steven Duncan, my teacher, to apply therapies or drugs that eliminate or inhibit the production of new antibodies to treat patients with severe pulmonary fibrosis,” she said. “Clinical experiments show very satisfactory results. About 50 percent of serious patients under the treatment of the professor have shown improvements. Some people who seem to be dying can get up and walk,” she said. However, Thi did not continue the project for her postdoc research. She decided to shift to do research on the application of AI in biomedicine. She no longer carries out experiments at biochemical laboratories, but does mostly programming at the computer. “There is a bitter truth that the percentage of successful research in biomedicine laboratories, as well as other experimental sciences, is very modest. About 90 percent of projects of new researchers fail. There are researchers who still cannot gain achievements after five years to complete their doctoral course,” Thi said, explaining her decision. Another reason that led to her shift was that she believed she could help many people more directly and quickly with her current work – using AI in medicine to treat patients suffering from uncommon diseases, than by implementing biomedical projects as she did in the past. …