Google Cloud and the German health-care company Bayer on Tuesday announced they’re constructing a synthetic intelligence-powered platform that goals to assist radiologists diagnose patients and work through cases more quickly.
The platform’s generative AI flags anomalies inside images for radiologists to take a look at, and it will possibly also pull up relevant information from that patient’s medical history, Thomas Kurian, CEO of Google Cloud, told CNBC. If a patient is available in for an annual breast cancer screening, for example, the platform can detect current problems, compare the image to prior screenings and summarize that information, he said.
A radiologist is a health care provider that uses medical images like CT scans, MRIs and X-rays to discover and treat conditions. But like physicians across many specialties within the U.S., radiologists are facing a growing labor shortage, in accordance with the Radiological Society of North America. As of early April, there are greater than 1,800 vacant job postings on the American College of Radiology’s website, in comparison with around 220 listings in April 2014.
Many radiologists are also fighting burnout as an aging population and easier access to imaging technologies have led to mounting caseloads. Google Cloud said its new platform could help alleviate these ongoing workforce challenges.
“That whole process flow is designed to assist radiologists get through their task with assistance more quickly,” Kurian said in an interview. “It makes them more efficient in order that they can actually see more images and repair more patients.”
Kurian said the platform doesn’t replace radiologists, because the doctor is in “sole control” of the suggestion they’ll make. As an alternative, he wants people to take a look at the platform as an assistive tool, like a microscope. The goal is to simply give radiologists the knowledge they need and save them from spending 15 or 20 minutes looking through patient records, Kurian said.
Google Cloud and Bayer usually are not the one firms exploring AI applications for medical imaging. In 2021, the Netherlands-based health-care company Philips and Amazon Web Services said they’re working to make use of AI to research medical imaging data. Similarly, GE HealthCare published a blog post in 2022 concerning the various AI tools it has developed for radiology.
Keith Kirkpatrick, research director at The Futurum Group, said there’s not one clear leader within the medical imaging AI market yet because the technology continues to be so new.
“It’s really wide open,” Kirkpatrick told CNBC. “We’re still fairly early in the sport without delay.”
Kirkpatrick, who was briefed on Tuesday’s announcement, said Google Cloud and Bayer’s radiology platform can have to display high levels of technical accuracy, offer strong privacy and security controls and be easy to make use of in an effort to win within the space. Establishing trust with radiologists can be the important thing, he added.
“Google goes to should make certain that their technology is as near bulletproof as possible,” Kirkpatrick said.
Google Cloud has been working with Bayer on the radiology platform for around five years. The muse was built using existing Google Cloud solutions like Vertex AI, Healthcare API and BigQuery, and Kurian said the platform’s data is encrypted.
The businesses drew on Bayer’s expertise in radiology to make certain that the product is simple for the doctors to make use of. Bayer said its radiology products generated around €2 billion ($2.16 billion) in sales last 12 months, in accordance with a release.
Even so, the platform represents a foray into a completely new business model for Bayer, in accordance with Guido Mathews, Bayer’s vp of radiology. As an alternative of offering a new pill or physical product, the radiology platform is a service, which is uncharted territory for the health-care company.
“To assist develop models and likewise to assist deploy models for radiology, that is a giant step forward for us,” Mathews told CNBC in an interview.
Google Cloud and Bayer are exploring a lot of different pricing models for the platform, he said. Other health-care organizations will begin testing and providing feedback on the platform this 12 months.