Nottingham has joined a pioneering £100m NHS consortium set to use a ground-breaking artificial intelligence (AI) tool to speed up the diagnosis of breast cancer – potentially saving more lives.
The tool – Galen™ Breast – developed by Ibex Medical Analytics, a world leader in AI-powered cancer diagnostics, was today announced as the winner of the UK Artificial Intelligence in Health and Care Award.
Together with Cambridge University Hospitals, North West Anglia, Betsi Cadwaladr University Health Board and University Hospitals Birmingham, Nottingham will use Galen™ Breast as part of routine practice on 10,000 patients.
Galen™ Breast was developed by a team of pathologists, data scientists and software engineers applying advanced Deep Learning technologies to train an AI algorithm on millions of image samples. It helps pathologists identify more than 50 breast-specific features and demonstrated excellent outcomes across multiple clinical studies.
It has the potential to reduce the turnaround time for patients and NUH pathologists will evaluate the technology’s impact on the quality of diagnosis, case review time and cost-effectiveness of a breast cancer diagnosis. Both patient and public involvement will be core to the project, led by the Oxford Academic Health Science Network.
Professor Emad Rakha is Honorary Consultant Pathologist at the University of Nottingham and NUH NHS trust and has developed a national and international consultation breast pathology referral practice in Nottingham with more than 350 referral cases a year.
He heads up the world-leading Breast Pathology Research Group (BPRG), which has a national and international reputation for its research in diagnosis, classification of breast diseases, evaluation of clinical outcomes and understanding the mechanisms governing hormone response and cancer cells’ spread in breast cancer. Professor Rakha is the study’s principal investigator.
Professor Rakha said: “Over the last several years in the UK, cancer cases increased while the number of pathologists decreased, resulting in record-high workloads for pathology departments.
“Timely and accurate diagnosis can significantly impact breast cancer survival rates, making Ibex’s solution a vital and welcome addition into NHS trusts.”
Dr Keith Girling, Medical Director at Nottingham University Hospitals (NUH) Trust, said: “We are thrilled to be part of this pioneering consortium at NUH.
“We fully expect that this tool will enable us to deliver higher quality care to patients in a more timely way and we very much look forward to working together with Ibex Medical Analytics and the other Trusts in the consortium.”
Chaim Linhart, PhD, Co-Founder and Chief Technology Officer of Ibex Medical Analytics, said:
“We are proud to receive this award from the NIHR and NHS.
“This award and other programs supported by the UK government signify its commitment to making the NHS the global leader in implementing AI technologies in healthcare.
“Our trusted and robust AI platform is already helping UK pathologists improve the quality of prostate cancer diagnosis, and we are eager to work with our NHS partners on expanding our collaboration to support breast cancer diagnosis and treatment.”
The UK Artificial Intelligence in Health and Care Award enables AI technologies with market authorisation to generate important evidence via large-scale commissioning or deployment.
With only two Phase 4 projects granted in 2023, the award will enable Ibex and its partners to demonstrate the clinical and economic effectiveness of Galen™ Breast in the real world.