Cancer detection and therapy solutions platform iCAD has announced that it would incorporate Google Health's mammography AI technology into its breast-imaging solutions. The Med-tech company has signed a strategic development and commercialization agreement with Google Health.
As per the report, the deal will bring Google's AI technology into clinical practice. This marks the first time the Alphabet subsidiary's AI research model has been licensed with a mammography vendor.
iCAD will utilize Google's AI breast-imaging technology in its portfolio, including its clinical decision support tool for breast cancer risk estimation ProFound AI Risk. It will also utilize Google Cloud's infrastructure to accelerate the commercialization of its cloud-based offerings.
Google’s AI system has been working in various healthcare scenarios for a few years now.
In 2020, a study published in Nature showed how Google's deep learning-based AI system fared compared to radiologists in detecting breast cancer during the early stages of the disease. The results showed the AI tool decreased the rate of false positives by 5.7% in the U.S. and 1.2% in the U.K. and false negatives by 9.4% and 2.7%, respectively, outperforming radiologists.’
In 2021, Google collaborated with Northwestern Medicine in a clinical research study that used an investigational AI model to flag participants' mammogram scans for review by a radiologist if they showed a higher likelihood of breast cancer, aiming to reduce the time to diagnosis.
In other instances, Google has been exploring using AI to detect diabetic retinopathy using its Automated Retinal Disease Assessment (ARDA). In March 2022, the company announced its AI-backed tool for clinicians in an EHR space called Conditions.