hi this is dr. bertalan mesko the
medical futurist and in this episode I
would like to talk about how quantum
computers work and show six examples how
they will fundamentally change
healthcare Google officially announced
Wednesday it has achieved quantum
supremacy the tech giant says its
quantum processor was able to perform a
complex mathematical calculation in
three minutes and 20 seconds this same
calculation would have taken the current
most powerful supercomputer nearly
10,000 years Lula's announcement was a
long-awaited milestone in computing
because it proved for the very first
time that quantum speed-up is achievable
in a real world system and that one day
these machines will be able to
outperform classical computers Google
and NASA have already demonstrated that
quantum computers can be at least a
hundred million times faster than
today's computers and its speed on with
advanced AI can change the world more
than the discovery of fire beers and
electricity combined so obviously I
wanted to know how quantum computers
actually work it was a simple question
how do they work people were trying to
explain it to me but I found myself
smiling and nodding looking at them
blankly they were speaking nonsense
they say a classical bit is zero or one
but a quantum bit is both a zero and a
one how do they even understand it I
couldn't tell maybe they've just learned
that line from an article - how can
something be two things at once
I felt like falling into a rabbit hole I
was wandering around my apartment the
coffee but cold in my hand was it still
hot
maybe it was both I couldn't sleep
anymore
I wanted to crack the answer maybe a
quantum computer could do it maybe just
maybe a quantum computer can figure out
how it works
turns out I wasn't far from the truth
while classical computers are based on
mechanical structures working through
the language of mathematics quantum
computers leverage the strange rules of
the quantum world they rely on two
phenomena that happened beyond the
atomic level superposition and quantum
entanglement superposition is what most
people hear about when it comes to
quantum computers classical computers
work with bits which can be a 0 or a 1
but a quantum bit or a qubit can can be
both a 1 and a 0 at the same time an
observing a qubit makes it collapse into
a fixed position no one knows why that's
happening but as I said maybe one day a
quantum computer can figure out the
answer to the mystery of itself now
instead of a bit having a defined value
as a 0 or a 1 a qubit has a probability
of being either flip a coin enough times
and the probability of heads and tails
will become clear in the same way
repeatedly measuring a qubit will
uncover the probability that it's in a
particular position why this is
important because the universe works
that way too
nature is also quantum our brains and
the drugs were searching for work in
probabilities so they can only be
accurately simulated on quantum
computers quantum computers working
synergy with the quantum mechanics of
the universe and they leverage its
capabilities or how the great Richard
Feynman put it nature isn't classical
Dennett and if you want to make a
simulation of nature you'd better make
it quantum mechanical now if the goal
was to make one qubit work the job would
have been done already but the trick is
to make multiple qubits work because
that's where the processing power comes
from
the classical bit stores information as
a zero or one and a quantum bit can be
both zero and one at the same time if
you have two quantum bits then there are
four possible states that you can put in
superposition with three cubits it's
eight four cubits at 16 but grows
exponentially with more qubits the
processing power grows exponentially as
decay because only with a 300 qubit
quantum computer we could perform more
calculations at once then there are
atoms in the observable universe
and it's all due to another quantum
phenomenon called quantum entanglement
two separate particles can be at the
opposite ends of our galaxy and still be
entangled meaning that changing one of
them would immediately change the other
without any physical connection Einstein
called this phenomenon outright spooky
and it truly is but it's how quantum
computers will be able to work the trick
is to entangle qubits to make them work
together and beat that we can
exponentially grow computing power with
every added qubit but the fact is I
could try to tackle the question of how
it works all day and I still couldn't
even cry the surface right now the lay
people don't even have the language to
fully describe how a quantum computer
works unless we have a PhD in quantum
mechanics and can wrap your head around
these quantum phenomena chances are you
won't fully understand it either
just like me but it's easy to understand
that superior speed and processing
capabilities above quantum computer have
the possibility to change literally
every aspect of our lives but how close
are they to make it a reality
we are turbine Discoverer oncology drugs
using a simulation platform that helps
us lower the astonishing 96 percent
failure rate in clinical trials I
believe that the major scientific leap
enabled by quantum computing in our
field would be the accurate simulation
of protein folding
how these little nano machines behave
is crucially important to understanding
how our cells work and I believe a lot
of what we still do not know in biology
would be essentially unlocked by having
an ability using the power of quantum
computers to simulate these tiny systems
these nano machines living in ourselves
as you can tell we are not there yet far
from it but Google achieved was a major
milestone maybe in the future they will
look back at this moment as we look at
the Wright brothers first flight but
right now even Google CEO says that the
first quantum application could be a
decade away and quantum computing in
healthcare could be even further if we
consider how healthcare systems are not
obviously slow adaptors of innovative
technologies and even if they will be
ready for destruction quantum computers
won't exactly drive the cost down which
is the major problem for most healthcare
systems around the world but goo Goo's
demonstration showed us that quantum
computing is in fact possible and
eventually it will revolutionize
medicine let's see how it would do it
through a patient journey first
sequencing DNA at full speed even though
we are already capable of full genome
sequencing and its costs are down to an
affordable level but in the future
genome sequencing will be like a blood
or urine test and quantum computers will
be able to analyze the vast amounts of
data quantum computing can ensure faster
sequencing more comprehensive analysis
comparing your results to those of
millions of other patients with similar
lifestyle and health parameters and it
will be able to make reliable
predictions about what might go wrong
with you later and what you can do now
to prevent it quantum computers can
finally help on crack the human genome
its impact on health and disease and
take out the guesswork from personalized
medicine for ensuring better healthcare
for everyone number two making patients
truly the point of care quantum
computing can also make another promise
of digital health or reality we already
have massive amounts of health data at
our disposal we have smartphones and
health sensors and portable diagnostic
devices keeping us informed about our
own health and disease management but
quantum computers will be able to make
sense of the astronomical data sets and
track patients help on-the-go
connected sensor systems might even
render physical hospitals useless and
truly make patients the point of care
they would get diagnosis and treatments
wherever they are number three
arriving at the perfect decision support
system we have long surpassed the era
when the accumulated knowledge of
medical professionals could reside in
one professor's head it's just too much
when there are 31 million medical
studies with 1/2 million more coming out
every year
iBM has tried to tackle that problem
with when they created their
supercomputer and it's a gorilla from
IBM Watson to sift through millions of
studies in a second but quantum
computing could take that to a whole new
level and even add some extra skills
these computers could not just use our
entire lexical and empirical knowledge
in real time but they could provide the
ultimate decision support for doctors
they could skim through all the studies
clinical trials and textbooks at once
they could find correlations and
causations that the human eye would
never find and they could find diagnosis
or treatment options that humans could
have never figured out by themselves
number four drug design this is where
the quantum computers capabilities are
best used for road design would not just
leverage the speed and processing power
of a quantum computer but the very
nature of quantum computing because the
way how electrons of the molecules of
drugs interact with the human body works
by the same principles as quantum
mechanics simulating quantum phenomena
on quantum computers can lead to much
faster and much more precise results
doing all that on a classical computer
seems primitive compared to that number
five clinical trials quantum computing
could lead to an era of in silico
clinical trials as well in silico trials
mean that no humans animals are not
when a single cell is required for
testing a particular therapy or drug
it's a human way and theoretically could
be a fast and more effective path than
in any viable trials today completely
simulated clinical trials are not
feasible with current technology and
understanding of biology yet but with
quantum computing virtual humans can
undergo trials and have new drugs
reaching markets within weeks from their
discovery number six creating the safest
medical data systems ever one of the
biggest concerns about quantum computers
is safety even the dumbest quantum
computer could easily crack the safest
encryption on a classical computer
qubits could simply overpower any
security so our medical records could
easily be exposed to write not exactly
what many people forget that while
quantum computers could easily crack
traditional encryption they will be also
used to leverage quantum uncertainty to
create encryption and quantum security
is literally unbreakable hackers would
have to break the laws of quantum
physics to gain access to our health
record the biggest challenge that lies
ahead is not whether being health care
will be able to understand how quantum
computers work because no offense 99% of
us never will but rather we will stop
caring about our health when we will be
taken care of by the quantum computer
what if we have to prepare for a word
where our well being is neither healthy
or diseased but it has a probability of
being either or both if you liked this
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