 From Austin, Texas, it's theCUBE. Covering South by Southwest 2017. Brought to you by Intel. Now, here's John Furrier. When we are live at the Intel AI Lounge, end of the day, day one of South by Southwest. I'm John Furrier, this is theCUBE. Our flagship programming, go out to the events and extract the signal from the noise. What a day it is here. It's the Pac-Venue AI Lounge with Intel. It's the hottest spot at South by Southwest. Of course, our theme is AI for social good. And our next guest is Bryce Olson with Intel. And your title officially is Global Marketing Director Health and Life Services. But you are an amazing story, cancer survivor, but a fighter, you took it to technology to stop your cancer. And also a composer with your friend called Facts. Fighting advanced cancer through song, the stories. Welcome to theCUBE. Thank you, it's great to be here. This is awesome. This is an amazing environment that we're in today. But yeah, you're right, like, you know, when you look at data, genomics data, which is looking at your DNA and running that out and being able to like understand what could potentially be feeling disease, it's the biggest of big data, you know? And when I was working at Intel, I was in a non-healthcare oriented group. And then all of a sudden I got hit with cancer. Like very aggressive advanced cancer. And I went through the whole standard of care. I went through that one size fits all, spin that wheel of treatments and hopefully you get something kind of thing. The general purpose chemotherapy, whatever, blah, blah, blah. Nothing worked. And I came to the point where I was starting to come to terms with the fact that I may not see my daughter get through elementary school. So cancer's starting to grow again. I go back to work. At this point, I only want to work in healthcare because why would I want to do anything else? I want to try to- But you have terminal cancer at this point. I have terminal cancer at this point, but I'm not sick yet. You know, I went through all the chemo and all that crap, but I'm not sick yet. So I asked to get into Intel's healthcare group because I want to try to help healthcare providers make this digital transformation. They let me in and what I found out kind of blew my mind, right? I learned about this new space of genomics and precision medicine. Well, it turns out, hold on for a second. You would tell me the story before, you skip the step. You turns out Intel has a lot of work going on. Oh my gosh. So you come in the Intel, you're like, they opened up the Kimono. Open up the Kimono. And I learned about this new era called, this basically genomics. So what is genomics? Genomics essentially is a way to look at disease differently. Why can't we go in and find out what's fueling disease deep in the DNA? Because every disease is diagnosable by DNA. We just have never had the technology and the science combining together to get to that answer before. Now we do. So I find out that Intel is working with all these genomic sequencing companies to increase the throughput so you can actually take something that cost $2 billion back in 2003. It took 10 years to do. Get it down to $1,000 and do it in a day, right? So now it democratizes sequencing so we can look at what's fueling disease and get the data. Then I learned about Intel working with all these major bioinformatics, open source and commercial providers, the Broad Institute at MIT, Harvard, largest genomic sequencing place on the planet, about how they take that data and then analyze it and get to what is really fueling disease. And then I learned about the cool things we're doing with customers, which I could talk about, like actual hospitals. Well, let's hold on for a second on that. Your shirt says sequence me, but this is really key for the audience out there listening and watching, is that literally 10 years ago, the costs were astronomical. No one could afford it. Nobody could afford it. Grants, philanthropy funded, R&D centers. Now, literally, you had your genome sequenced for thousands of dollars. Well, so, and this is what happened, right? I learned about all the stuff that Intel's up to you and I get kind of upset. I get kind of pissed off, right? Because nobody's giving this to me. Nobody's sequencing my cancer, right? So I go back to the cancer center that I was working with. This is January of 2015. Turns out they were getting ready. They were perfecting their lab diagnostic test in this. It was like a perfect storm. They were ready. I wanted it. They gave it to me. Turns out my cancer grows along this particular mutated pathway that we had no idea. So the data was, so in your DNA sequence, step one, step two was you go in with massive compute power, which was available. And you go look at it and turns out there's a nuance to your cancer. That's identifiable. Yeah, a needle in that haystack, right? The signal in the noise, if you will, right? It's that there's a specific molecular abnormality. And in my case, it was a pathway that was out of control. And the reason why I say it was out of control is the pathway was mutated. Then there's this tumor suppressor gene that's supposed to stop cancer. He's gone. So it's like a freeway of traffic. So he's checked out and all of a sudden this thing's going wild. And so, but this is cancer for everyone has their own version of this. Yes, they do. So this is now a new opportunity. Yes. Now we understand what's fueling my unique cancer. We took data, we took technology and science, and we got to the point where we understand what's fueling my cancer. With that data, I find a clinical trial testing a new inhibitor of that pathway. So I just got to stop and just pause because it's very emotional. And first of all, and yours is an inspiration to me and I think everyone watching. I'm looking at some scientists here at the Intel AI who says, your amazing starts with Intel. This is truly an amazing story. It's really beyond amazing. It's life savings. And that's what happened to me. This is now at the beginning. So take me through in your mind, where is the progress bar on this in the AI evolution? Or when I say AI, I mean like machine learning, compute, end-to-end technology innovation. It's available obviously. What is it going to be mainstream? Yeah, so we're at a point right now where we can go in, if you have advanced cancer, we're at a point now where we can sequence that person's cancer and find out what's driving it. We can do that. But where it's going to get problematic is look at my case. Mutated pathway, hyper-segmented my cancer, right? So prostate cancer, a common cancer, now became a rare cancer because we hyper-segmented it by DNA and I went after a treatment that was targeted. So when my cancer starts to grow again, now I'm a rare cancer. So how are we gonna find people that are just like me out there in the world? So your point about rare, I mean, there's no comparable data to look at benchmarking. Yeah, no given hospital will ever have enough data in this new molecular genomics guided medicine world to solve my problem. Because the doctors are going to want to look and they're going to say, who out there looks just like Bryce from a DNA perspective uniquely? What treatments were given to people like that and what were the outcomes? The only way we're going to solve that is as all these centers and hospitals start amassing data, they have to work together. They have to collaborate in a way that preserves patient privacy and also protects individual IP. Okay, so Bryce, let me ask you a question. If you could put a bumper stick or a sound bite around, what AI means to this evolution and innovation around fighting cancer and using data and technology, what is the impact of AI to this? So where I'm kind of going with this analogy is that without artificial intelligence to sift through my data and all the other millions of potential cancer patients to start getting DNA data, humans can't do it. It's impossible. Humans will not have the mental ability to sift through reams and reams of DNA data that exists for every patient out there to look at treatments and outcomes and synthesize it. We can't do it. The only way someone like me will survive and see the long term will be through artificial intelligence. Without it, I will extend my life but I won't turn cancer into a manageable disease without AI. So AI will extend your life? Because AI is going to solve the problems that humans can't. When you have the biggest of big data. Love that sound bite. Love that, say that again. AI solves problems that... AI is going to solve the problems that humans can't. They simply, humans don't have the capability to look at the entire genome and all this other genomic, molecular, proteomic, all this other data. We can't make sense of it. Alright, so let me throw something out at you first. I agree with you 100%. But also there's a humanization factor because now algorithms are also biased by humans. So what's your thoughts, given your experience, the role of human race, actual human beings that have a pulse, not robots or algorithms? Yeah, so let me give you a real practical example. So the way that we fought my cancer was through a targeted therapy. Molecular abnormality, targeted drug. The other way that people are fighting cancers is through immunotherapy. Wake up the immune system to fight it. Guess what? Right now there are 800 combination therapies going on with immunotherapy to try to stop people's cancer. How the heck are we gonna know what is the right combination for each person out there? Unless we have like an algorithm marketplace where people are creating these and taking in predictive biomarkers, prognostic biomarkers, looking at all the data, and then pushing a button to help an oncologist decide which of the 800 combos to use will never get there. That's awesome. Well, so let me ask you a question. So for people watching that are younger, like my daughter, she's 16, my other daughter's a pre-med, she's a sophomore in college. They're like, school's like old. Like school's like linear and they get classes. But this younger generation are hungry for data. They're hungry, they're young. They disrupt their bomb throwers. They want to create value. And so they're incented to like go after cancer. And you know, the means are out there. Cancer such, we all have relatives who have died of cancer. It's a sucking situation. There's a motivated force out there of our scientists and young people. How do they get involved? How would you look at, based on your experience and your experience, and obviously you get the songs here, but on a more practical level, what discovery, what navigation can someone take in their life to just get involved or not a catalog, not the course where. Yeah. I think so there's a number of different things that can happen. If you look at the precision medicine landscape and you start with the patient, okay? Patients don't understand this. Genomic what? Sequencing what? You know, they don't understand that there's a new way to fight cancer. So guess what's going to become a 20% per year growth rate job. In the next 10 to 20 years, genomics consulates. You don't have to be a doctor, but you have to be able to understand enough about biology and math. To be able to offload doctors and have a discussion with patients to say, let me explain something to you. There's a way to understand your disease. It's in DNA, this is what it means, and then help them guide them into new clinical trials and other therapy that's guided by that huge growth opportunity for kids. Well also it's compounded by the fact what you just said earlier, what these become rare cases on paper are also need to be aggregated into a database of some sort so you can understand the data. So there's also a data science angle here. And absolutely, and it's not just cancer by the way. I mean, kids, little kids in the NICU, pediatric ailments. Have you ever known anybody who's got a kid with a very rare neurodevelopmental disorder and the parents are on a diagnostic odyssey for 10 years, they can't figure out what it is. So they go from specialist to specialist, specialist, $100,000 later, guess what? The answer's in the DNA, right? So DNA sequencing number one. DNA sequencing number one. And then once you start sequencing that, you've got to make sense of all this data. So there's going to be tons of jobs, not only in biology, but in analytics to take all this data and start finding. We've got a few minutes left. I want to get a plug in for your little album here. It's called Facts, Fighting Advanced Cancer Through Songs. So here's the story on that. So when you go through something that could be terminal, it's really nice when you can have something productive to channel that energy. So for me, to be able to channel feelings of sadness and frustration, I started writing songs. Music was therapeutic for me. I took that, started collaborating with a bunch of musicians throughout Portland, including cancer survivors. And we said, why don't we use music as a way to reach people about a new message of how to fight cancer? So we've created that. I have an organization that is raising awareness for a new way to fight cancer and raising funds to bring sequencing to more people. So the URL is faxmovement.com. So faxmovement.com, check it out. Okay, now I'm so impressed with you. One, you're on a terminal track. You go back to work. But I don't look like I'm terminal. You look great, you look great. Now you're at Intel, Intel's got technology. You harness it. Now you're on a mission now. You're on a passion, that's obvious, the songs. Now what's going on in Intel? Because now you're out doing the Intel thing. Give us the Intel update. So I can talk to you about this precision medicine, this personalizing diagnostic and treatment plan which I've already done. I could talk to you about other things that we're doing to help hospitals transform. Predictive clinical analytics. Let's look at something like rapid response team events. Have you ever been in the hospital and heard the alarms go off? That's usually somebody having a heart attack unexpected. Data is out there. If you look at all the data about people that have had rapid response teams events, we can create predictive signals to actually predict that an hour before what happened. So predictive clinical analytics and enabling hospitals to look at populations as a whole to treat them better in this new value-based care is a technology-driven thing. So we're working on that as well. Awesome, yeah. Bryce, thanks for coming on the Cube. We really appreciate it. Really inspirational, great to meet you in person. Great to meet you too, John. I'm looking forward to following up with you when you get back to Portland. Awesome. Our gang in Palo Alto, I think to get you on the horn. I love it. Skype in and keep in touch. Really inspirational, but more importantly, this is very relevant and the technology's now surfacing. To change not only people's lives in the sense of saving them are the great things. And I'm so proud to be able to work for a company that is using its brand and its technology to basically change people's lives. It's amazing. Bryce Olson, my hero here at South by Southwest. Amazing story. Really, really. You can choose to be a victim or you can choose to go after it. So excited to have met you. It's the Cube, bringing it all down here at South by Southwest at Intel's AI Lounge. It's hopping. Music tonight. Music tomorrow night. Cube tomorrow. Panels. AI changing the future. Powered by Intel. Hashtag Intel AI. I'm John Furrier. You're watching the Cube. Thanks for watching. We'll see you tomorrow.