AI-powered cancer diagnostics firm Ibex Medical Analytics and the KSM Research and Innovation Institute at Maccabi Healthcare Services, have announced the deployment of the Ibex Second Read System for breast biopsies at Maccabi’s pathology institute in Israel.
The system detects and grades cancer in breast biopsies – using an algorithm to analyse cases in parallel to pathologists, and it compares between the pathologists' diagnoses and the algorithm's findings, subsequently alerting in case of discrepancies with high clinical importance (e.g. a missed cancer).
The algorithm used by the Second Read system was developed by Ibex using advanced machine learning techniques and trained on data sets from Maccabi's pathology institute. The institute was the first pathology lab in the world to implement an AI powered cancer diagnostic system in its routine practice - the Ibex Second Read system for prostate – which is now deployed in pathology labs worldwide.
Joseph Mossel, Ibex Medical Analytics’ co-founder and CEO said: "We are proud to roll out a first of a kind product that improves the diagnosis of breast cancer - the most common cancer in women with over 2 million new cases globally each year. The Second Read for breast is a landmark achievement for our team of pathologists, computer scientists and AI specialists and for our partnership with Maccabi Healthcare Services, enabling us to extend the reach of our product suite. The future looks brighter than ever for Ibex, with a growing interest from pathology labs in our products and new tissue types we expect to introduce during 2020.”
Prof. Varda Shalev, managing director of the Kahn-Sagol-Maccabi Research and Innovation Institute at Maccabi Healthcare Services, added: "We are excited to use the Second Read system for breast cancer detection in our routine practice following a successful research and partnership with Ibex, led by the KSM Research and Innovation Institute. At Maccabi Healthcare Services we are constantly looking for new technologies that can make a real impact on patient care. We believe that adding a security layer to our pathology reporting will improve accuracy levels of our cancer diagnosis, as already proven by the Second Read's prostate module that we have been using in the past 18 months.”
