Hewlett Packard Aims to Revolutionize Personal Medicine

Hewlett Packard Enterprise is aiming to one day help doctors ensure that tailor-made medical treatment can be available for patients. To do so, they are crunching data from patient information that is related to genes, diseases, personal behaviors and treatment history assembled from around the world.

Simply called "The Machine," this project represents about half of the research efforts of Hewlett Packard Labs. Jaap Suermondt, the Vice President of Software Analytics at HP Labs, said that this is by far their most ambitious research project.

He shared that the company is hoping to offer the Machine commercially to customers and health care providers in a few years, but they are hoping that the prototype will be available by the end of the year. The Machine, he said, is "first and foremost about flipping the computer inside out."

This is done to digitize information, especially considering that there is a need to efficiently process huge data sets that are becoming available about patients.

Unlike traditional computing, the Machine will make memory based on the data itself. Suermondt said that their new generation of computers can have memory in its middle instead of a processor, meaning that users can put as much memory in it as they want.

Tech Republic noted that the way The Machine's approach will allow for large access of large memory. Instead of chopping data into chunks to act as limitations for their processors, the Machine will share access to a large memory -- pentabytes -- in a for of pool for a more universal apprach.

Hewlett Packard Labs CTO and Director Marin Fink said that their goal tat this point is to manipulate datasets while achieving multiple orders of magniture less energy.

According to CNBC, the computer's architecture will be reliant on Phototonics, or light particles that make for fast communication. Having massive amounts of memory can allow health professionals to precompute things in a sort of "what if" scenarios to help benefit patients n the long run. HPE believes this is the first step in doing so.