Quantum Computing for Healthcare

Quantum computing has the potential to revolutionize the healthcare industry. What follows is merely a small sampling of the possibilities. Improving medical care is one of the most exciting potential applications of quantum computing because of the way it stands to impact the lives of people. And, improving healthcare does not happen only within the walls of hospitals and clinics; the benefits may be far-reaching across industries that affect the provision of quality medical care alongside the potential to reduce costs.

What is quantum technology in healthcare? 

For those who work in healthcare, quantum computing has many relevant applications. These include helping medical professionals diagnose patients with greater speed and accuracy, protecting patient data and patient privacy, improving access to quality care in remote areas, and even improving the discovery of new medicines. For those in quantum computing, healthcare is one field with the potential to demonstrate a broad number of use cases.

How is quantum computing used in healthcare?        

While quantum computing healthcare use cases are abundant, quantum technology is yet to fully mature. But, as quantum computers become larger and more powerful, they may be able to enhance the ability of medical professionals to diagnose patients quicker and more accurately through the use of better data compression, data pattern identification, classification, and image classification. Data classification, for example, may be able to take the vital information of a patient and compare it to the vital information of other anonymous patients with various medical conditions to possibly accelerate the diagnosis of specific conditions. Image classification, for another example, could be something along the lines of examining a medical scan for specific features and then highlighting those areas of the image for doctors and specialists to examine more closely.

Improvements in Natural Language Processing (NLP) may also provide value to patient care, whether inside medical facilities or through online chatbots, while fraud detection and fraud reduction may help to ensure medical and monetary resources are used as intended. The latter may result in cost savings that can be passed on to patients. Furthermore, quantum Monte-Carlo simulations may help model treatment strategies for effectiveness and cost. Quantum computing and healthcare have many opportunities for integration. 

How will quantum computing affect medicine?    

In addition to the benefits in patient diagnosis, patient care, and cost reduction, quantum computing may also strengthen patient privacy. This may be done by implementing defensive cryptography to protect against malicious attacks. Such defensive measures may include adopting “quantum-safe” post-quantum cryptography protocols, which are currently undergoing final review by NIST, and utilizing quantum networking with Quantum Key Distribution (QKD) for communication and the transmission of patient information. Indeed, privacy ranks alongside quality and affordable care as a top issue affecting healthcare.

How can quantum computing be used in medicine?                                         

Some of the greatest impact in medicine will come from solving problems that classical computers can’t or never will solve. One of those “killer apps” in quantum computing is molecular drug discovery beyond small molecules. This is already being aided today with the help of a hybrid approach and is only expected to become even more beneficial as quantum computers mature. Gate-based quantum computers, also known as universal quantum computers, are expected to efficiently simulate molecular structures, including simulating protein folding, and they are also expected to aid in the development of chemical catalysts.

The significance of these achievements cannot be overstated. Analyzing patient data in huge databases and identifying features on medical scans are things that classical computers can do today, but quantum computers may someday do in less time, at less cost, and with greater accuracy. But accurately modeling even modestly-sized molecules can be impossible for even the world’s most powerful classical supercomputers. Therefore, for the chemistry-related application, quantum computers are expected to be able to perform computations that would otherwise be impossible without them.

Classiq empowers leading healthcare companies to research the algorithms mentioned here without substantial investments in workforce education. The Classiq platform allows sophisticated algorithms to be constructed with straightforward functional blocks. Contact us to see how we might help you accelerate the path to better healthcare.