According to WHO, breast cancer is the most frequent type ofcancer among women, representing 25% of all cancer types. In EU27, according toENCR, 1 in 7 women is affected by breast cancer throughout her life. In thiscontext, prevention is the only available option, and early detection of cancerhas proven to be crucial and breast screening is the best affordable practice tosave lives. Worldwide 250 million women every year are subject to breastscreenings.
AIGEA Medical’s team is working on DeepMammo, the AI empoweringradiologists in the early detection of breast cancer. DeepMammo supports imagingworkflows and helps radiologists to identify cancer earlier, with greaterprecision, reducing the screening time and allowing a personalized screeningmethod, simplifying daily screening activities radiologists perform all thewhile also reducing costs. By doing so, DeepMammo saves women’s lives.
The technology has been developed with a focus on using multimodalAI-based Image Recognition to support cancer finding, classification andreporting.
With the ELISE grant, AIGEA Medical will enhance DeepMammofurther by:
a. Assessing DeepMammo’s ethical compliance andtrustworthiness, integral for an AI solution like DeepMammo, which aims toleverage technology in the interest of democracy and common well-being.
b. Analysing not only digital images (mammograms) but alsoradiologist diagnosis related to images screening, to improve the functions ofDeepMammo, especially the ‘AI explainability’ component, which is crucial forradiologists and patients to understand and trust DeepMammo and itsrecommendations.
c. Generating a draft report that a radiologist can use tocheck and confirm the outcomes of the AI image analysis
Contributing to the society and SDGs
A cancer diagnosis impacts not only the patient, but theirinner circle (family, relatives, friends), wider community, and society as awhole. In addition, delayed diagnosis reduces the chances of successfultreatment. By reducing errors and diagnosis time, DeepMammo contributes tosaving lives, makes the work of the doctors easier and reduces costs, thusbringing value to the individual patients, radiologists, and other healthcareprofessionals, as well as the society.
DeepMammo has also a direct impact on two main Sustainable DevelopmentGoals (SDGs) of the UN Agenda for Sustainable Development, strongly related toSocietal aspects:
By reducing screening costs, DeepMammoimproves access to healthcare, especially for people living in poverty, makingit possible for a wider population of women to get access to life-savingservices.
One of the key indicators of poverty is access to healthcareservices. DeepMammo can contribute to improving access to healthcare and promotingwellbeing for all, by supplying the necessary tools for healthcareprofessionals, especially in communities where the lack of medical professionalservices is one of the barriers to extensive implementation of social securitysystems.
Increased relevance in post-COVID years
Dealing with a pandemic the world has never seen before,during the COVID-19 pandemic many healthcare institutions and professionals hadto direct their already limited resources away from prevention-orientedservices such as breast screening, to treat COVID-19 patients. As reported by theNational Screening Observatory (ONS), in Italy 38% of the planned breastscreenings were canceled in 2020; the European Cancer Organization has recentlyestimated 100 million screening tests were not performed in Europe as a resultof the pandemic. This backlog is generating an increasing amount of breastscreening to be performed in 2022 and in the forthcoming years, requiring greaterresources, and new organizational approaches, including innovative workflowsolutions like DeepMammo.
About AIGEA Medical
AIGEA Medical Srl is a Medtech start-up founded in January2022 by a team of global experts and technical visionaries, after a successfulexperience with a DeepTech startup. AIGEA Medical’s management team has morethan 50 years of expertise in the MedTech and Radiology market, spanning a mixof IT experts and AI Scientists supported by a Clinical Advisory boardaccommodating radiologists and clinical experts. “Our long-term objective isto create a high-performance, low-cost technology that we can share withhospitals, clinics, and producers of radiological devices. Our final goal is tocontribute to having better and more efficient healthcare services. Whilestarting with the focus on breast cancer, we aim to expand the applicability ofDeepMammo to diagnosing other types of cancer as well in the future”explains Federico Picardi, AIGEA Medical CDO and Co-founder.
How to get in touch?
Website: www.aigeamedical.com
Contact email: info@aigeamedical.com
