What follows is an excerpt from a book I was writing on Causality in 2020. I eventually abandoned the manuscript as the software ecosystem was not mature enough to fold all of causality into 1-2 tools. Recently I took out the manuscript again, to share some basic insights with a colleague, and I realised that it would also make sense to share an extract here.
Continue reading “The Counterfactual Revolution”Mathematics and Biology (the Pharma Vision)
I began this blog almost exactly three years ago. My goal was two-fold: first, to demonstrate thought leadership in an area in which I was then founding a company; and, second, to have a demonstrated track-record rather than a picture-perfect pitch-deck. This latter is clearly a sub-goal of the first.
In those early days, I began a series of articles on Mathematics and Biology. I began with a comparison of the two fields. From there I moved on to discussing the people and skills involved, essentially why mathematicians so rarely do biology. I then discussed the outlier which is bioinformatics. I had two further articles planned in the series, after which point I wanted to attempt a synthesis. The missing articles are on the Microbiome and Quantitative Systems Pharmacology (QSP). These will remain missing articles for now, time has moved on and my thoughts on all of these topics have progressed enormously.
A few weeks ago I published a futurecast about using virtual patient’s for pharma drug development. There was a key idea buried in that article which in essence is my current synthesis perspective on mathematics and biology. I want to highlight this idea here and flesh it out slightly.
Continue reading “Mathematics and Biology (the Pharma Vision)”Three things I know: Future-casting 1 of 3
There is a game which is popular in incubation environments. It works particularly well in drawing insights from deep-tech founders. What is the one thing which you know which nobody else knows today?
I played the game a few weeks ago with a potential co-founder and I came up with three personal insights. I’m going to share them here, in three short articles, over the next three weeks.
Artificial General Intelligence is closer than you think
Continue reading “Three things I know: Future-casting 1 of 3”5 Big Challenges Facing Medical AI
I have been working on medical AI, in some form or other, for most of my adult life. For the past 12 months I have taken the opportunity to pause from racing forwards with my own start-ups and to look again, partly as a researcher, at the tools at my disposal and their intended applications. What I have seen worries me.
Part of my efforts to improve things, have taken the form of a number of peer-reviewed scientific articles. A few more such articles are still under review or exist only as work-in-progress. Today I want to summarise the 5 greatest problems which I see facing medical AI systems. For some of them I think that there are clear mitigations. For others, I suspect that we will need to rethink the entire system.
Continue reading “5 Big Challenges Facing Medical AI”True North
A good entrepreneur has a canny intuition for their True North. I’ve heard this from many good investors.
Personally I’ve always believed it. One of the bases through which I judge my professional contacts is on their decision making ability. Some people seem to always make good choices. Others, faced only with good outcomes, somehow still manage to find a more painful outcome.
Continue reading “True North”Preprint Announcement – Guide to Regulating Medical AI
One year ago, I left the start-up where I had been working on an AI-driven companion to accompany patients through their cancer treatments.
When I left, I was deeply frustrated with the start-up environment surrounding AI in Healthcare. I was still convinced that AI could help in this space, but all I was seeing was teams going down what I considered to be the wrong paths.
Continue reading “Preprint Announcement – Guide to Regulating Medical AI”New article: Pharma’s Data Problem
Marco Schmidt, the CSO of Biotx.ai, and I have published an opinion article in the Pharma Boardroom online trade journal. We have been discussing the topic ever since my first keynote talk at the launch of the Charité Digital Health Forum in 2018 (a video of the same talk is available from PyData 2018).
We title the article: Pharma’s Data Problem.
Continue reading “New article: Pharma’s Data Problem”What do I work on?
Prediction
Predictive models
Mathematical, statistical, AI/ML, whatever
Modelling the Modeller
Something I’ve struggled with on and off over the 20 years that I have been making mathematical models is explaining those models to others. I have tried to bring people along and develop their understanding. But mainly what I observed was that, some people just got it and others did not.
I have certainly improved my own skill at explaining. This comes down to having streamlined stories and simpler take-home messages. Telling a clearer story certainly improves my audiences’ self-satisfaction, but ultimately some of them get the whole message and others do not.
Continue reading “Modelling the Modeller”Predictive Models
I have mentioned, in the past, that I am a huge fan of Nate Silver. Something which he used to repeat quite frequently, on their podcast, is a sort of predictive modelling tautology:
The best prediction of the future is no change.
Nate Silver [Paraphrasing]
This concept has even got a probabilistic and philosophical theory behind it. All other things being equal, over the long history of time, the next moment from now is not likely to be any different from right now. If we repeat this process often enough then we will be right more often than we are wrong. In essence, we are accepting that there is continuity (and perhaps causality) in our experience of the natural world. Political scientist David Runciman even explored the concept in his recent work of political theory.
I originally took this statement in the manner in which, I hope, it was intended. But behind every great phrase there is often an enticing problem. Thinking over this phrase has led me to realise that there are three basic types of predictive models and each one of them has a fundamentally different purpose and indeed parameterisation.
Continue reading “Predictive Models”