Oxford spin-out Optellum is the leader in artificial intelligence decision support for the early diagnosis and optimal treatment of lung cancer. GE Healthcare, a global leader in medical imaging solutions, and Optellum will collaborate to advance precision diagnosis and treatment of lung cancer.
Together, the companies are seeking to address one of the largest challenges in the diagnosis of lung cancer, helping providers to determine the malignancy of a lung nodule: a suspicious lesion that may be benign or cancerous. The majority of incidentally detected pulmonary nodules present an indeterminate cancer risk and are incredibly challenging for clinicians to diagnose and manage, leading to delayed treatment for cancer patients and invasive procedures on healthy people.
Optellum’s Virtual Nodule Clinic identifies and scores the probability of malignancy in a lung nodule, which is key to determining whether biopsy is necessary, and accelerating diagnosis. It is the only FDA-cleared AI-assisted diagnosis software for early-stage lung cancer, and has been shown to improve the sensitivity and specificity of malignancy assessments of indeterminate nodules — enabling doctors to make optimal clinical decisions
The clinician’s AI-assisted diagnosis of malignancy may enable patients whose nodules are not malignant to avoid unnecessary and aggressive procedures such as biopsy and surgical resection, while expediting the diagnostic process, and enabling the right treatment to start earlier. This has the potential to provide patients with personalised diagnosis and treatment plans, enabling lung cancer patients to be treated at the earliest possible stage when survival rates are the highest.