By Sarai Rodriguez
Hartford HealthCare and Ibex Medical Analytics announced a clinical research and innovation partnership focused on leveraging Ibex’s AI solution, Galen Breast, to support pathologists in providing more accurate breast cancer diagnostics.
“We are proud to partner with Hartford HealthCare to support their ongoing digital transformation,” chief revenue officer at Ibex Medical Analytics, Joel Duckworth stated in the press release.
“We are committed to helping all of our customers provide precise, timely, and personalized diagnosis to all patients,” Duckworth added. “With Ibex’s trusted AI and advanced digital pathology technologies, Hartford HealthCare can empower their pathologists to deliver highly accurate and prompt diagnoses, with the potential to directly impact prognosis for patients, setting a new standard in breast cancer care quality in the United States.”
Breast cancer is the most common malignant disease that impacts women, Ibex Medical Analytics stated. Approximately one in eight American women are expected to develop breast cancer within their lifetime.
Over the last several years, there has been an increase in the number of cancer cases, coinciding with rapid advances in personalized medicine.
These trends have resulted in growing workloads that have been inflicted on pathology labs and health systems, emphasizing the need for complementary clinical decision-support tools, the press release stated. Hartford HealthCare will implement the AI solution to help pathologists detect and grade cancer in biopsies.
Through this collaboration, both organizations aim to improve patient survival rates by enhancing the accuracy and timeliness of breast cancer detection.
“Even though patients rarely interact with the pathologists examining their tissue samples, their interpretive expertise greatly affects the care received,” vice president and chief clinical innovation officer at Hartford HealthCare, Barry Stein said in the announcement.
The calibration will also review the clinical performance of the Galen Breast algorithm in a study to evaluate the use of the Galen Breast second read application and digital workflow in live clinical use at Hartford HealthCare.
Chief of pathology and laboratory medicine at Hartford Hospital, Srini Mandavilli suggested that this technology has the potential to support the traditional microscopic evaluation of cancers done by pathologists.
Furthermore, the AI solution is well-positioned to impact pathologists workload, specifically during a time when pathologist staffing and recruitments are challenged in the midst of a global increase in cancer cases, Mandavilli stated.
“This AI assistant provides a higher safety net with minimal, additional effort,” Margaret Assad, program director of the selective pathology fellowship at Hartford Hospital, said.
In addition to improving accuracy and supporting staff, AI tools can also enhance patient care access.
Recently, Medtronic and the American Society for Gastrointestinal Endoscopy (ASGE) collaborated to improve health equity by offering underserved communities better care access to colon cancer screenings through an AI-assisted colonoscopy tool.
Medtronic’s Health Equity assistance program for colon cancer screening efforts is set to distribute 50 Medtronic GI Genius™ intelligent endoscopy modules to endoscopy centers that serve communities with low screening rates.
