What You Should Know:
– Ibex Medical Analytics announces the first U.S. deployment of its AI-powered solution for cancer detection in pathology, at the CorePlus Servicios Clínicos y Patológicos, LLC, a leading clinical and anatomic pathology lab in Puerto Rico.
– The deployment will improve cancer care in the U.S., where the number of pathologists decreased by nearly 20% in the past decade. This comes shortly after the first implementation of such technology in both France and the UK.
Ibex Medical Analytics and CorePlus Servicios Clínicos y Patológicos, LLC, a high complexity CLIA-certified clinical and anatomic pathology laboratory, today announced the first deployment in the Americas of an artificial intelligence (AI) powered digital pathology solution for detecting prostate cancer at its main facilities in Carolina. The deployment includes Whole Slide Imaging (WSI) techniques used to digitize traditional glass slides and the Galen™ Prostate, an AI-based solution for prostate cancer detection, both validated following strict College of American Pathologists’ guidelines. Patients and urologists will now benefit from this technology, which will become the new standard of care for the diagnosis and treatment of prostate cancer.
Why It Matters
The global rise of cancer patients around the world has led to an increased demand for screening tests, and the number of pathologists has decreased, leading to longer wait times for cancer diagnosis, and higher error and misdiagnosis rates. Independent clinical studies have shown the Ibex algorithm to identify up to 12% error rates for cases diagnosed without AI.
There has been a surge in demand for diagnostic tests in recent years, alongside an increase in cancer prevalence. However, these trends coincide with a decline in the number of pathologists who specialize in diagnosing cancer, resulting in greater workloads. In the United States alone, the number of pathologists decreased by nearly 20% in the past decade. Moreover, to this day, pathologists often diagnose cancer by examining biopsies through a microscope, a manual process that is timely and prone to human error.
Enhancing Diagnostic Accuracy and Efficiency
The new deployment of digital pathology and AI-based solutions at CorePlus will support pathologists in enhancing diagnostic accuracy and efficiency. For validation purposes, CorePlus tested the Galen Prostate solution on 1,301 prostate tissue slides digitized using 3DHISTECH scanners. The statistical results showed that the solution was extremely accurate in detecting cancer, with 96.9% Specificity, 96.5% Sensitivity, and a 0.994 Area Under the Curve (AUC) score. The WSI implementation and laboratory conversion to a digital platform was conducted by SYNDEO, a technology firm specializing in the development of innovative diagnostic platforms and solutions to support clinical processes.
The advances in the application and integration of AI are expected to impact critical areas affecting both cost and efficiencies in healthcare diagnostics by reducing diagnostic errors, accelerating access to AI-based second opinions, reducing the use of immunohistochemistry, improving patient care and increasing the body of knowledge in healthcare.
“It is with great pleasure that we announce that pathologists at CorePlus have reported in excess of 500 prostate cases using a novel AI solution developed by our partner, Ibex Medical Analytics from Israel,” said Dr. Juan C. Santa Rosario, CorePlus Medical Director. “The AI algorithm, which is part of the Galen Prostatesolution, will allow us to detect cancer and other clinically significant features in prostate cases with greater precision and sensitivity. All prostate cases processed at CorePlus are now evaluated by the AI system as part of our routine clinical practice, providing us with unprecedented quality control,” said Dr. Santa who led the process of digital pathology transformation and AI solution validation.
