Israeli Government Launches Comprehensive Quantum Computing Development Program

At the recent CES 2022 tech event, Japanese corporation OMRON, the world’s leading manufacturer and distributor of personal heart health products and other medical devices, highlighted (and later announced on their website) the activities of their partnership with Kyoto University to develop an AI[1]powered platform that uses remotely gathered patient data to predict cardiovascular diseases at an earlier stage than current averages. Kyoto University is closely tied to the identity of Japan's government and considered Japan's leading research university. They operate a Top500 HPC system on-site in addition to conducting research on the cutting edge Fugaku supercomputer. This new program, part of an ongoing partnership between the two organizations, seeks to explore the use of AI to analyze blood pressure metrics for early detection of cardiovascular diseases faster and with greater accuracy allowing for treatment courses to be changed or taken more quickly.

The US Office of Science and Technology Policy recently released its second annual National Quantum Initiative (NQI) report, a supplement to the President's FY22 Budget Request that outlines the major US government quantum information science (QIS) research activities and related funding levels out to FY 2022. As seen in Figure 1, the proposed FY2022 budget, which is targeted for about $880 million, calls for an increase of nearly 11% from the previous year. Roughly half of the funding is to come from the NQI and the other half from base agency-specific QIS R&D budgets. The figure represents the sum of Federal budgets for U.S. QIS R&D efforts in over a dozen agencies including NIST, NSF, DOE, NASA, DOD, and DHS, and it also aggregates several QIS subtopics such as computing, networking, sensing, fundamental science, and end quantum-related use cases