iCAD has announced that it will be entering into a strategic development and commercialization agreement with Google Health to integrate Google’s artificial intelligence (AI) technology for breast cancer and personalized risk assessment into iCAD's portfolio of breast imaging AI solutions.

iCAD will use Google’s technology to improve its 3D and 2D AI algorithms and will commercialize developed products. iCAD will also leverage Google Cloud's secure, scalable infrastructure, which the company says will accelerate the time to market for iCAD's cloud-hosted offerings.

This is Google’s first commercial and clinical partnership after publishing research in 2020 that found its breast cancer detection algorithm outperformed radiologists.

“After several years of research and testing, Google was looking for a partner to commercialize its mammography AI technology,” Stacey Stevens, president and CEO of iCAD Inc. told HCB News. “Google selected iCAD for this partnership because of iCAD's legacy of leadership in the breast AI space and its well-established install base.”

iCAD has more than 7,500 licensed installations of its breast health solutions, including products such as ProFound AI Risk for Digital Breast Tomosynthesis (DBT), a clinical decision support tool that provides a short-term breast cancer risk estimation that is personalized for each patient based on their mammogram.

“iCAD's commitment to innovation is driven by elevating the quality of breast care delivered to every woman, everywhere and this partnership will allow us to expand and extend the impact of our technologies on a global scale,” Stevens said.

Both iCAD's and Google's technology have been shown to improve efficiency and accuracy for radiologists reading mammography, however they have been trained on different data sets, Stevens said.

Using Google Cloud will also help the company bring breast screening tools to underserved regions that are constrained by infrastructure challenges.

“By combining our market experience and deep tradition of pioneering innovation in the fight against breast cancer with Google's technological expertise and patient insights, we can work together to advance healthcare solutions that make a difference for individuals, caregivers and health professionals,” Stevens said.

Greg Corrado, head of Health AI for Google, explained that collaborating with companies like iCAD is a key part of its strategy.

"Google Health's AI tech could be used to make healthcare more available, more accessible, more accurate,” Corrado said in a statement announcing the collaboration. “But effecting change like this will only be possible if we work closely with forward-looking partners; those with a deep tradition of pioneering innovation and the market experience and wherewithal to put innovations into real workflows. The entire ecosystem needs to work together to advance healthcare solutions that truly better serve patients, doctors, and health systems. Google Health working with iCAD is a great example of two organizations coming together to leverage our mutual strengths, technological capabilities, and resources to improve breast cancer screening worldwide, with the ultimate goal of improving health outcomes of individuals and communities."

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