iCAD and Google Health announce strategic development and commercialization agreement to integrate AI

The agreement indicates Google Health’s first collaboration with a mammography AI vendor

iCAD Inc., a global medical technology leader providing innovative cancer detection and therapy solutions, on Monday announced a strategic development and commercialization agreement with Google Health to integrate its artificial intelligence (AI) technology into the portfolio of iCAD’s breast imaging AI solutions.

Google Health has entered to introduce its breast imaging AI into clinical practice, marking the first commercial partnership. Both companies will work together to enhance ICAD’s preeminent breast cancer AI solutions for mammography and increase access to the technology for millions of women and providers around the world. iCAD will also leverage Google Cloud’s reliable, scalable infrastructure, accelerating the point in time to market for iCAD’s cloud-held offerings.

Through this partnership, Google has licensed its mammography AI technology and personalized risk assessment with iCAD. iCAD will apply the licensed technology to further improve its 2D and 3D AI algorithms and will commercialize advanced products.

Partnering with Google marks a historic milestone for iCAD, as leveraging Google’s exceptional AI and Cloud technology elevates the caliber of its industry-leading breast AI technologies and may also accelerate adoption and expand access on a global scale, said Stacey Stevens, President, and CEO at iCAD.

Google Health is iCAD’s cross-company initiative to use technology to help everyone, everywhere to be healthier, and collaborating with state-of-the-art companies like iCAD is a key part of this strategy, said Greg Corrado, Distinguished Scientist / Senior Research Director, Google AI.

Google Health’s AI tech may be used to make healthcare more accessible, more open, and more accurate. The entire network needs to work together to expand healthcare solutions that indeed improve service to patients, doctors, and health systems, Corrado stated.

Google Health working with iCAD is an excellent illustration of two organizations partnering to leverage their common forces, technological capabilities, and resources to enhance breast cancer screening worldwide, with the ultimate objective of improving the health outcomes of individuals and communities, Corrado added.

Advancing innovation through partnership

iCAD’s Breast AI Suite is a wide-ranging portfolio of clinically proven technologies for breast cancer detection, density assessment, and individualized short-term risk evaluation.

Through this partnership, iCAD will validate and integrate Google Health’s mammography AI technology into its Breast AI Suite, to maintain patients’ cancer journeys.

Although 3D mammography is increasing in adoption around the world, in many countries 2D mammography remains widely prevalent for breast cancer screening, said Axel Gräwingholt, Head of the Department of Mammography Screening at the Radiologie Am Theater in Paderborn, Germany.

A growing body of research shows ProFound AI could play a significant role in empowering clinicians to overcome these challenges, and iCAD’s commitment to the continual advancement of this technology offers clinicians significant tools that can lead to enhanced outcomes for all, Gräwingholt said.

iCAD also plans to incorporate Google Health’s mammography AI technology into ProFound AI Risk, the world’s first clinical decision support tool that offers an accurate short-term breast cancer risk assessment that is truly tailored for each individual. This is the only commercially available technology that can prospectively detect people who are at a high risk of being diagnosed with breast cancer before or at their next screening, using information readily available in a screening mammogram. It offers clinicians significant information that can support them customize screening regimens for patients, based on their risk, rather than a single-size-fits-all age-based screening program which is the situation in several countries.

Expanding access by cloud-based offerings

In addition to licensing Google Health’s mammography AI technology, iCAD will also leverage Google Cloud’s secure, scalable infrastructure to embark on transforming its delivery model from an on-premises suite of solutions to cloud-hosted solutions. The capability to develop cloud-hosted solutions in different regions can facilitate business-scale access to AI-based tools in underserved regions that are hindered by infrastructure challenges.

Google Cloud presently supports a wide variety of healthcare systems and workflows, to enable secure, unceasing patient care, empower healthcare professionals with partnership and productivity tools, and make better clinical and operational decisions based on data analytics and acumens. By integrating with Google Cloud, iCAD businesses will be able to deploy and scale iCAD’s solutions more seamlessly, extending incomparable interoperability and the potential to increase access on a global scale.

“With customers in over 200 countries and territories worldwide, Google Cloud is used extensively across an array of industries, and it is particularly well optimized for healthcare imaging AI delivery. This partnership will improve its ability to expand its addressable market and accelerate the commercialization of its cloud offering, said Ms. Stevens.

Healthcare providers are gradually shifting away from locally deployed systems in favor of virtual or remote locations. Additionally, hospitals are under increasing pressure to reduce costs, while providing higher-quality care, underscoring the need to streamline operations and increase clinician productivity. Integrating Google’s Cloud technology into this more flexible delivery model offers facilities the solution they need, and the technology patients deserve, Ms. Stevens added.

About iCAD, Inc.

iCAD, Inc., headquartered in Nashua, New Hampshire, is a global medical technology leader providing innovative cancer detection and therapy solutions.

About Google Health

Google Health is an enterprise-wide endeavor to help billions of people be healthier. It works toward this vision by meeting people in their everyday moments and empowering them to remain healthy and uniting with care teams and the public health community to provide more accessible, accurate, and equitable care. The teams are applying their expertise and technology to improve health outcomes globally – with high-quality information and tools to support people manage their health and well-being, solutions to transform care delivery, research to catalyze the use of artificial intelligence for the screening and diagnosis of disease and data and acumens to the public health community.