This application was a development made by an Indian company called Qure.AI and thanks to the collaboration with the pharmaceutical company, they are seeking to reach hundreds of doctors in Mexico and the region. According to Hegewisch, a patient with lung cancer takes 10 to 12 months from when they start going to the doctor to have a diagnosis, so these types of studies could accelerate the detection of the disease in less time.
Why is it easier to detect cancer with AI?
Beyond helping doctors with the interpretation of x-rays, one of the advantages of this application is how it is possible to obtain a result from any x-ray taken in the chest. That is, if a patient had a muscle injury due to a fall, they can go to the doctor, request an x-ray and detect in time a disease that is more complicated to treat.
“Chest x-rays in the hospital can be done because a patient is going into surgery, because it was a check-up, because a rib was broken, because a cardiologist sent a control x-ray to his patient. These patients are not being screened for lung cancer, but they may have a previous diagnosis,” Hegewish said.
The pharmaceutical company already has more than 1,000 doctors using the mobile app and they hope to process at least 600,000 images this year, where so far they have managed to process 50,000.
Edgardo Vera, director of corporate relations at Astra Zeneca in Latin America, also pointed out the relevance of early detection of this condition, which is the most lethal type of cancer in the region.
“The costs for the diagnosis, treatment and palliative care of lung cancer amount to 1.35 billion dollars, while indirect costs reach 286 million dollars,” said the Astra Zeneca executive.
These figures exceed the nominal Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of Peru in 2021, and in countries such as Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia and Mexico, they also exceeded this figure during that same year.