National Healthcare Group uses AI for lung and heart disease screening
The National Healthcare Group, the healthcare cluster covering central and northern Singapore, wants to integrate an AI assistant into its radiology workflow.
According to a press release, the group will implement South Korea’s Lunit’s AI solution for chest X-ray analysis in its primary care diagnostic radiology systems.
The Lunit INSIGHT CXR will be tested at Geylang Polyclinic for 10 months starting in October. The findings will inform the full rollout of the solution across the rest of the NHG polyclinics.
WHY IT IS IMPORTANT
Until recently, X-rays at the NHG outpatient clinics were manually assessed, analyzed and interpreted by radiologists.
Lunit’s AI solution will complement their work in analyzing CXR images, the volume of which has increased over the years, NHG said. It can quickly detect significant abnormalities that indicate heart and lung disease in CXRs.
“We are convinced that NHG GPs can treat their patients more efficiently with Lunit INSIGHT CXR as a triage tool, reducing waiting times for discharge or referral to higher-urgency care institutions,” said Tan Cher Heng, associate professor and head of research and innovation at NHG.
THE BIGGER CONTEXT
The AI implementation is funded by the National Health Innovation Centre Singapore and will be implemented through Singapore’s National Radiology AI Platform. AimSG (AI Medical Imaging Platform for Singapore Public Health).
The vendor-neutral platform, developed by Synapxe, NTT Data and SingHealth, aims to enable public hospitals and healthcare institutions to implement validated AI imaging solutions to improve their diagnostic capabilities and efficiency.
AimSG initially helped integrate the same Lunit AI solution into the radiology workflows of Singapore General Hospital and Changi General Hospital.
In other related news, Lunit has signed a deal with Samsung Electronics earlier this year to integrate its AI CXR solutions into the latter’s premium line of X-rays. In addition to supporting national cancer screening programs worldwide, Lunit’s AI solutions have seen increasing adoption among military units in Asia Pacific.