HIT专家网
来源：HIT专家网 作者：张家杰 博士
【编者按】 过去20年，未来20年，我们正处在一个历史的转折点。日前，在2017年毕业典礼上，德州大学生物医学信息学院张家杰院长回顾了过去20年信息技术的加速时代和颠覆时代，并展望机器学习和人工智能引导和驱动的医疗健康的下一个20年。
张家杰博士现任美国德克萨斯大学生物医学信息学院院长、教授、 Glassell Family Foundation Distinguished Chair。他曾毕业于中国科技大学少年班，是加州大学圣地亚哥分校世界第一个认知科学博士，美国医学信息学院Fellow，曾获得亚太美国传统组织(APAHA)布什总统奖。
这是针对信息学博士及硕士毕业生的讲演，经张家杰博士授权在此刊发，相信对其他听众也有启发作用。
http://v.youku.com/v_show/id_XMjc2Njg2NjMwMA==.html?spm=a2h3j.8428770.3416059.1
或点击访问：德州大学生物医学信息学院张家杰院长在2017年毕业典礼上的演讲视频
【演讲稿中文译文】
谢谢Bien先生。每年5月在毕业典礼上，我们回顾过去365天，表彰和庆祝我们SBMI(School of Biomedical Informatics)学生的学业成就。去年，41名SBMI学生获得硕士学位，3名获得博士学位。此外，96名学生完成生物医学信息学研究生证书，其中许多学生将继续攻读硕士学位，甚至博士学位。和往常一样，我为今年的毕业生及往年数百毕业生感到骄傲。迄今为止，SBMI校友已有34名博士生、327名硕士生和299名证书结业生。
20年前，在1997年，一名年龄71岁的“年轻“女士在考虑未来20年该做什么。她创建了一个将计算机科学和信息技术带入医学的新学院。她是我们生物医学信息学院创始人Doris Ross博士。
Ross博士是一位真正有远见的人。 20年前的1997年，Google的两位创始人仍在斯坦福大学攻读博士学位；1997年，史蒂夫·乔布斯（Steve Jobs）还没有回到苹果公司，苹果公司正努力为生存而拼搏，iPhone要等十年才会出现；而Facebook的创始人马克·扎克伯格（Mark Zuckerberg）在1997年只是个中学生。
那么，Ross博士是怎么想出创建信息学院的呢？在她2015年去世之前，我没有的得到明确的答案。但是有一件事我是确信的：Ross博士是几个电影院的俱乐部成员，她几乎每周都会去看电影，我想她肯定是詹姆斯·邦德（James Bond）的粉丝，并且观看了所有的星际迷航电影。不知你们是否知道，我们今天所拥有的许多创新都来源于星际迷航，包括：手机，平板电脑和著名的、万能的、手持式的、可以做许多医疗诊断的Tricoder。
过去20年到底发生了什么事？我们的在校生人数从14人增加到323人，增长了23倍。这是什么概念？这与苹果公司的股票相当，其股价同期增长了24倍。
过去20年是真正的加速时代，不仅仅是我们的学校，而是整个人类文明。到2003年，整个人类文明创造了5个Exabytes的数据——5后面18个零。2011年，相同数量的数据在两天内就可以创造；今天，只需要1分钟。
10年前，美国只有10％的医疗病历在电脑上；今天已经接近100％。
15年前，一个人的基因组测序的成本足以买到一架波音737；今天，你可以用你的iPhone来换你自己的完整的基因组序列。在10年内，世界上 20％人口的基因组将被测序。
今天，世界40％的人口拥有智能手机；它将在几年内翻番。你今天所拥有的智能手机比1975年最快的超级计算机强大5倍，今天的价值是3500万美元。当时它用于火箭设计和天气预报。想想这一点：你们每个人在你的口袋里都有五台超级计算机，几乎可以做任何你想象的事情。
过去20年也是一个颠覆的时代。
我现在拿着我的智能手机，不管当我走路、站立、吃饭、睡觉或开会，我都一直拿着它，甚至当我与Colasurdo校长一起开会时。我不需要道歉，因为它是我大脑的一部分，也是你大脑的一部分，是它的延伸。你可以在Google搜索的第一页得到几乎任何问题的答案。尼日利亚的街头摊贩今天可以获得比肯尼迪总统更多的信息，并且可以实时执行。
以前当我做报告的时候，我总会问有几个人还给他们的父母手写书信。令我惊讶的是，总有一个人举手。今天我不会问你们这个问题，因为我不想看到任何一只手出现。过去，一封给我父母的信可以给我买一个芝士汉堡，而且要花两个星期时间才能到达我父母的手上；今天，它是免费的、实时的，如果你喜欢，还可以加完整的图像和视频，可通过电子邮件、短信、Facebook或微信等多种途径。这是通讯的颠覆。
亚马逊比我自己更了解我，我经常买亚马逊推荐的书，因为它们通常比我已经购买的书更好，是关于同一个话题的。
今天世界上最大的出租车公司是Uber。但是，Uber是一家没有出租车车队的IT公司。当今世界上最大的酒店公司是AirBnB，AirBnB也是一家没有拥有任何酒店房地产的IT公司。
我的钱包里有一张纸质支票，整整一年都没有被触动。如果要存支票，你可以用手机拍照来进行，几乎所有常规银行交易都可以在线和电子化完成。在今天的中国，有6.95亿人用手机付款，这是美国人口的两倍。
除了信息提取、通信、零售、旅游和银行，信息技术也在颠覆教育行业。在今年完成硕士学位的42名SBMI学生中，有22人完全在线完成，其中12人今天在场，其中有些人也许今天是第一次来校园；在96名研究生证书学生中，91名在线完成了学业。在线教育使得德克萨斯州、美国全国和世界各地的学生可以在自己的位置和自己的时间获得高质量的信息学教育。
医学是最后一个还没有被颠覆的主要产业。但现在正在发生，在这一刻，特别是在近来机器学习和人工智能突破的驱动下。我的iPhone可以比在座的许多人更能听懂我的口音。 Facebook可以自动将人物名字标记在照片中。通过实时视频图像处理，Google的无人驾驶汽车没有任何困难就可融入旧金山的繁忙交通。而电脑现在已经可以打败世界上最好的国际象棋、jeopardy和围棋选手。在医学上，电脑可以分析皮肤图像，并将皮肤病分类，可以和皮肤科医师做得一样好。 X奖基金会上个月刚刚宣布了Star Trek Tricoder大赛的冠军，一个兄弟团队，包括一名医生和一名工程师，用iPad和一套传感器构建了一个装置，可以测量15种医疗状况，并在家中可以诊断90％的急症病例。
在接下来的20年中，我们将看到另一波机器学习和人工智能的突破，特别是在医学领域。
美国内布拉斯加州参议员Ben Sasse两周前在《华尔街日报》上写了一个评论，很重要、很有趣，我想读给你们听听：“我是一个历史学家，这通常意味着我是一个泼冷水的人。当人们说我们处于历史上独特的时刻时，历史学家的工作就是把事情放在相对的位置上，指出比不连续性有更多的是连续性，我们不是特别的，我们认为我们的时刻是独一无二的，因为我们是自恋者或者我们现在是在这个时刻。但是，现在我们正在经历的，包括过去二十或三十年，以及未来二十或三十年，在历史上是独一无二的。可以说这是人类历史上最大的经济颠覆。”
今天我们在庆祝我们学院的20周年院庆。为未来20年的颠覆做准备，没有其他的礼物比一个专门属于我们学院的大楼更好。我们学院的一座45000平方英尺的建筑物刚刚在上周开工。我想请大家和我一起感谢Colasurdo校长，他使得这座楼成为现实。这座1500万美元的建筑是德州大学和德克萨斯州的巨额投资。 我们学院的指数增长，特别是过去5年的惊人发展，与其说是归于我们乘着技术发展的浪潮，还不如说是归于Colasurdo校长的远见卓识和强力支持。Colasurdo校长可以说是一个算命先生，可以看过去20年，也可预测未来20年。
我希望今天坐在我面前的每个毕业生都想想在未来20年内，你对生物医学信息学和医疗健康的影响将会如何。你在SBMI学到的一些知识可能会在几年内在快速变化的技术环境中过时。但是，你从SBMI获得的跨学科思维和终身学习的技能将为你将来的任何事情做好准备。
SBMI教师、工作人员、荣誉贵宾、客人、家人和朋友，请与我一起祝贺这些毕业生以及他们未来二十年将取得的成就！
附：张家杰院长演讲英文原文：
Thank you, Mr. Bien. Every May at the annual commencement ceremony, we look back at the past 365 days to recognize the academic achievements of our SBMI students. This past year, 41 SBMI students earned their master’s degree and three students earned doctoral degrees. Additionally, 96 students finished their graduate certificate in biomedical informatics and many of them are going to continue to pursue their master’s degree and even the PhD program. As always, I am proud of those students and the hundreds before them who achieved their goals. To date, SBMI has 34 doctoral alumni, 327 master’s alumni and 299 certificate completers.
20 years ago, in 1997, a young lady, at the age of 71, was thinking about what to do for the next 20 years. She created a new school that brought computer science and information technology into medicine. She is Dr. Doris Ross, the founding Dean of our School of Biomedical Informatics.
Dr. Ross is a true visionary. 20 years ago in 1997, Google’s two founders were still working on their PhDs at Stanford.
In 1997, Steve Jobs was not back to Apple yet and Apple was struggling to survive as a company. And iPhone would not be ready until ten years later.
And Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s Founder, was merely a middle school boy in 1997.
How did Dr. Ross come up with the idea of starting an informatics school? I never got a clear answer before she passed away in 2015. But there is one thing I know for sure: Dr. Ross was a club member of several movie theatres and she went to movies almost every week. I assume she was a fan of James Bond and also watched all the Star Trek movies. You may or may not know, many innovations that we have today were all conceived in Star Trek, including smart phone, tablet computer, and the famous all purpose, all powerful, hand-held Tricoder that can do many medical diagnoses.
What happened over the past 20 years? Our student enrollment went from 14 to 323, a 23-fold increase. Guess what, this is on par with Apple Computer’s stock price, which has a 24-fold increase over the same period.
The past 20 years are truly an age of acceleration, not just for our school, but for the entire human civilization.
By 2003, the entire human civilization created 5 Exabytes of data – 5 with 18 zeros. In 2011, the same amount of data was created in 2 days; today, it takes 1 minute.
10 years ago, only 10% of medical records in US were on computer. Today, it is getting close to 100%.
15 years ago, the cost of sequencing one person’s genome is sufficient to buy a Boeing 737; today you can trade your iphone for a complete sequence of your genome. Within 10 years, the genomes of 20% of the world population will be sequenced.
Today, 40% of the world population have smart phones; it will double in a few years. A smart phone you have today is 5 times more powerful than the fastest super computer in 1975, which was worth $35 million in today’s dollar. It was used for rocket design and weather forecast. Think about this: each of you literally have five supercomputers in your pocket that can do almost anything that you can imagine.
The last 20 years are also an age of disruptions.
I am holding my smart phone now. I use it when I walk, when I stand, when I eat, when I sleep, and when I meet with people, even with Dr. Colasurdo. I do not need to apologize. You do not need to hide your phones, either. The phone is an extension of the brain. You can get the answer to almost any question on the first page of Google search. And a street vendor in Nigeria today can access more information than President Kennedy could, and can do it in real time.
Every time when I give a talk, I ask how many people still hand-write letters to their parents. To my surprise, there is always one person raising the hand. Today I will not ask you, because I do not want to see any hands coming up. In the old days, a letter to my parents could buy me a cheese burger, and it took two weeks to arrive; today, it is free and it is in real time, with full audio and video if you prefer, through email, texting, facebook, or wechat.
Amazon knows me better than I know myself. I do buy the books recommended by Amazon, because they are typically better than the ones I already bought, on the same topic.
The biggest taxi company in the world today is Uber. But Uber is an IT company that does not own any taxi fleet. The largest hotel company in the world today is AirBnB, and AirBnB is also an IT company that does not own any property.
I have a paper check in my wallet that has not been touched for the whole year. To deposit a check, you take a picture with your phone. Nearly all routine banking transactions can be done online and electronically. In China today, 695 million people use their phones to make payment in stores. That is twice of the US population.
Besides information access, communication, retail, travel, and banking, information technology is also disrupting the education industry. Among the 42 SBMI students who completed their Master’s degrees this year, 22 did so completely online, and 12 of them are here today in the audience, and some of them are on campus in person for the first time; among the 96 graduate certificate students, 91 completed their studies online. Online education makes it possible for students across Texas, the nation, and the world to get high quality informatics training at their own location and at their own time.
Medicine is the last major industry that has not been disrupted yet. But it is happening now, at this moment, especially with the recent breakthroughs in machine learning and artificial intelligence. My iPhone can understand my accent better than many of you. Facebook can tag your faces in photos automatically. With real time video image processing, Google’s driverless cars have no difficulty merging into the busy traffic in San Francisco. And computers have outperformed the best human players in chess, jeopardy, and Go. In medicine, computers can read skin images and categorize skin diseases as accurately as dermatologists. The X Prize Foundation last month just announced the winner of the Star Trek Tricoder competition. A team of brothers, one doctor and one engineering, built a device with ipad and a set of sensors, that can measure 15 medical conditions and diagnose 90% of ER cases at home.
Over the next 20 years we will see another wave of disruptions driven by machine learning and artificial intelligence, especially in medicine.
Ben Sasse, US Senator for Nebraska, wrote a commentary in Wall Street Journal two weeks ago. I want to read it to you:
“I am a historian, and that usually means I’m a killjoy. When people say we’re at a unique moment in history, the historian’s job is to put things in perspective by pointing out that there is more continuity than discontinuity, that we are not special, that we think our moment is unique because we are narcissists and we’re at this moment. But what we are going through now—the past 20 or 30 years, and the next 20 or 30 years—really is historically unique. It is arguably the largest economic disruption in recorded human history.”
Today, we are celebrating the 20th anniversary of our school. To prepare for the next 20 years of disruptions, no other gift is better than a permanent home dedicated to the school. The construction of a 45000 SF building for our school just began last week. I would like to ask all of you to join me to thank Dr. Colasurdo for making this a reality. This $15 million building is a huge investment by UTHealth and the State of Texas. The phenomenal growth of our school, especially over the past five years, is not so much due to our riding of the technology wave as due to the vision and strong support of Dr. Colasurdo, who sees not just the past 20 years but also the next 20 years.
I want each of the graduates sitting before me today to think of what impact you want to have on biomedical informatics and healthcare over the next 20 years. Some of what you learned at SBMI may become obsolete in a few years in the rapidly changing technology environment. But the interdisciplinary thinking and the skills of lifetime learning you acquired from SBMI will prepare you well for anything you do in the future.
SBMI faculty, staff, honorees, guests, family and friends please join me in applauding these graduates and the many accomplishments they will undoubtedly earn over the next two decades.
Click here to watch the video.
【责任编辑：谭啸】
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