Revolutionizing breast cancer detection through AI: iCAD and Google Health launches partnership
Google Health’s first partnership with a mammography AI vendor
iCAD, Inc. announced a strategic development and commercialization agreement with Google Health to integrate its artificial intelligence (AI) technology into iCAD’sportfolio of breast imaging AI solutions. Marking the first commercial partnership Google Health has entered into to introduce its breast imaging AI into clinical practice, the companies will work together to enhance iCAD’s market-leading breast cancer AI solutions for mammography and expand access to the technology to millions of women and providers worldwide. iCAD will also leverageGoogle Cloud’s secure, scalable infrastructure, accelerating the time to market for iCAD’s cloud-hosted offerings.
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Under the definitive agreement, Google has licensed its AI technology for breast cancer and personalized risk assessment to iCAD. iCAD will apply the licensed technology to further improve its 3D and 2D AI algorithms and will commercialize developed products.
“Joining forces with Google marks a historic milestone for our Company, as leveraging Google’s world-class AI and Cloud technology elevates the caliber of our market-leading breast AI technologies and may also accelerate adoption and expand access on a global scale,” according to Stacey Stevens, President and CEO of iCAD, Inc. “iCAD and Google Health are united in our purpose-driven missions to elevate innovation, improve patient care and optimize outcomes for all. By combining the power of our technologies and teams, we strengthen our fight against breast cancer and positively impact the lives of women and their loved ones across the globe.”
“Google Health is our cross-company initiative to use technology to help everyone, everywhere be healthier – and collaborating with leading-edge companies like iCAD is a key part of this strategy,” said Greg Corrado, Ph.D., Head of Health AI, Google. “Google Health’s AI tech could be used to make healthcare more available, more accessible, more accurate. But effecting change like this will only be possible if we work closely with forward-looking partners, those with a deep tradition of pioneering innovation and the market experience and wherewithal to put innovations into real workflows. The entire ecosystem needs to work together to advance healthcare solutions that truly better serve patients, doctors, and health systems. Google Health working with iCAD is a great example of two organizations coming together to leverage our mutual strengths, technological capabilities, and resources to improve breast cancer screening worldwide, with the ultimate goal of improving health outcomes of individuals and communities.”
Advancing innovation through collaboration
iCAD’s Breast AI Suite is a comprehensive portfolio of clinically proven technologies for breast cancer detection, density assessment and personalized short-term risk evaluation. Under the agreement, iCAD will validate and integrate Google Health’s mammography AI technology into its Breast AI Suite, with the goal of supporting patients’ cancer journeys.
“Although 3D mammography is growing in adoption around the world, in many countries 2D mammography remains widely prevalent for breast cancer screening. Many European countries require double-reading for mammography, yet the global shortage of mammography professionals makes this particularly challenging in many cases,” said Axel Gräwingholt, MD, a radiologist at the Radiologie Am Theater in Paderborn, Germany. “A growing body of research shows ProFound AI® could play a significant role in empowering clinicians to overcome these challenges, and iCAD’s commitment to the continual advancement of this technology provides clinicians critical tools that can lead to improved outcomes for all.”
iCAD also plans to incorporate Google Health’s mammography AI technology into ProFound AI Risk, the world’s first clinical decision support tool that provides an accurate short-term breast cancer risk estimation that is truly personalized for each person. This is the only commercially available technology that can prospectively identify people who are at a high risk of being diagnosed with breast cancer before or at their next screening, using information readily available in a screening mammogram. It offers clinicians critical information that can help them tailor screening regimens for patients, based on their personal risk, rather than a one-size-fits-all age-based screening program that is the case in many countries.
“iCAD’s Breast AI technologies are revolutionizing breast cancer screening by making it more accurate, efficient and personalized. With the addition of Google Health’s technology, we are positioned to improve the performance of our algorithms for both 2D and 3D mammography, which will further strengthen our market leadership position and drive worldwide adoption,” added Ms. Stevens. “This partnership will enable us to take advantage of Google Health’s strengths, technological capabilities and resources as a global leader in AI. By joining forces with Google Health, we are providing a pathway to further elevate our portfolio and deliver it on a global scale.”
Expanding access via cloud-based offerings
In addition to licensing Google Health’s mammography AI technology, iCAD will also leverage Google Cloud’s secure, scalable infrastructure to begin transforming its delivery model from an on-premise suite of solutions to cloud-hosted solutions. The ability to expand cloud-hosted solutions into new regions can help the company scale access to AI-based tools in underserved regions that are constrained by infrastructure challenges.
Google Cloud currently supports a wide variety of healthcare systems and workflows, with the goal of facilitating secure, continuous patient care, empowering healthcare professionals with collaboration and productivity tools, and making better clinical and operational decisions based on data analytics and insights. By integrating with Google Cloud, iCAD customers will be able to deploy and scale iCAD’s solutions more seamlessly, offering unparalleled interoperability and the potential to expand access on a global scale.
“With customers in more than 200 countries and territories worldwide, Google Cloud is used pervasively across a range of industries, and it is particularly well optimized for healthcare imaging AI delivery. This partnership will improve our ability to expand our addressable market and accelerate the commercialization of our own cloud offering," said Ms. Stevens. “Healthcare providers are increasingly moving away from locally deployed systems in favor of virtual or remote settings. Additionally, hospitals are under increasing pressure to reduce costs, while providing higher quality care, underscoring the need to streamline operations and increase clinician productivity. Integrating Google’s Cloud technology into this more flexible delivery model offers facilities the solution they need, and the technology patients deserve.”
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Topic world Diagnostics
Diagnostics is at the heart of modern medicine and forms a crucial interface between research and patient care in the biotech and pharmaceutical industries. It not only enables early detection and monitoring of disease, but also plays a central role in individualized medicine by enabling targeted therapies based on an individual's genetic and molecular signature.
