Artificial Intelligence as Accelerator for Genomic Medicine and Planetary Health

Abstract

Genomic medicine has made important strides over the past several decades, but as new insights and technologies emerge, the applications of genomics in medicine and planetary health continue to evolve and expand. An important grand challenge is harnessing and making sense of the genomic big data in ways that best serve public and planetary health. Because human health is inextricably intertwined with the health of planetary ecosystems and nonhuman animals, genomic medicine is in need of high throughput bioinformatics analyses to harness and integrate human and ecological multiomics big data. It is in this overarching context that artificial intelligence (AI), particularly machine learning and deep learning, offers enormous potentials to advance genomic medicine in a spirit of One Health. This expert review offers an analysis of the rapidly emerging role of AI in genomic medicine, including its current drivers, levers, opportunities, and challenges. The scope of AI applications in genomic medicine is broad, ranging from efficient and automated data analysis to drug repurposing and precision medicine, as with its challenges such as veracity of the big data that AI sorely depends on, social biases that the AI-driven algorithms can introduce, and how best to incorporate AI with human intelligence. The road ahead for AI in genomic medicine is complex and arduous and yet worthy of cautious optimism as we face future pandemics and ecological crises in the 21st century. Now is a good time to think about the role of AI in genomic medicine and planetary health.