South Korean AI startup Lunit has signed a reference site agreement with Baheya Foundation for Detection & Treatment of Breast Cancer, which will adopt its mammography AI. 

WHY IT MATTERS

The non-profit charity provides free-of-charge care for breast cancer patients from early detection through all treatment stages, including surgeries, chemotherapy, radiation, and physical therapy. The foundation targets to detect and treat around 500,000 women each year. Since its inception in 2015, it has served around 170,000 Egyptian women. 

Baheya Foundation will be adopting Lunit INSIGHT MMG, a software application that analyses mammography images and detects lesions indicative of breast cancer. The tool is trained using more than 240,000 mammography images, including around 50,000 breast cancer cases. It has been both cleared in the United States and Europe and approved for sales in over 35 countries worldwide.

Moreover, Baheya Foundation and Lunit agreed to collaborate on a study using INSIGHT MMG to further investigate the value of AI in reading mammography. 

THE LARGER TREND

In November, Lunit also signed a similar agreement with RadLink, a Singapore-based private diagnostic and molecular imaging service provider, which has adopted both the INSIGHT MMG and INSIGHT CXR. This came a month after the Health Sciences Authority cleared the AI products for commercialisation. 

Meanwhile, the two companies are also working on a joint clinical study using the mammography AI tool with the same objective as the study with the Egyptian foundation.  

ON THE RECORD

"We are so delighted to introduce to our foundation the most recent diagnostic and therapeutic innovations. Introducing such AI solutions upgrade our medical service and allow us to be a pioneer in Egypt and the Middle East," said Dr Mohamed Emara, CEO of Baheya Hospitals.