iCAD and Google Health Ink Strategic Development and Commercialization Agreement
Google Health AI and
Cloud technology to be integrated into iCAD’s portfolio with potential to
elevate performance and expand access to millions of women worldwide
Agreement marks Google
Health’s first partnership with a mammography AI vendor
NASHUA, N.H. – November 28, 2022 – iCAD, Inc. (NASDAQ: ICAD), a global medical technology leader providing
innovative cancer detection and therapy solutions, today announced a
strategic development and commercialization agreement with Google Health to integrate its artificial intelligence (AI)
technology into iCAD’s portfolio of breast imaging AI solutions. Marking
the first
commercial partnership Google Health has entered into to introduce its breast
imaging AI into clinical practice, the companies will work together to enhance iCAD’s
market-leading breast cancer AI solutions for mammography and expand access to the
technology to millions of women and providers worldwide. iCAD will also
leverage Google Cloud’s secure,
scalable infrastructure, accelerating the time to market for iCAD’s cloud-hosted
offerings.
Under the definitive agreement, Google has licensed its AI
technology for breast cancer and personalized risk assessment to iCAD. iCAD
will apply the licensed technology to further improve its 3D and 2D AI
algorithms and will commercialize developed products.
“Joining forces with Google marks
a historic milestone for our Company, as leveraging Google’s world-class AI and
Cloud technology elevates the caliber of our market-leading breast AI
technologies and may also accelerate adoption and expand access on a global
scale,” according to Stacey Stevens, President and CEO of iCAD, Inc. “iCAD and
Google Health are united in our purpose-driven missions to elevate innovation, improve
patient care and optimize outcomes for all. By combining the power of our
technologies and teams, we strengthen our fight against breast cancer and
positively impact the lives of women and their loved ones across the globe.”
“Google Health is our cross-company
initiative to use technology to help everyone, everywhere be healthier – and
collaborating with leading-edge companies like iCAD is a key part of this
strategy,” said Greg Corrado, Ph.D., Head of Health AI, Google. “Google
Health’s AI tech could be used to make healthcare more available, more
accessible, more accurate. 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.”
Advancing innovation through
collaboration
iCAD’s Breast AI Suite is a
comprehensive portfolio of clinically proven technologies for breast cancer
detection, density assessment and personalized short-term risk evaluation. Under
the agreement, iCAD will validate and integrate Google Health’s mammography AI
technology into its Breast AI Suite, with the goal of supporting patients’
cancer journeys.
“Although 3D mammography is growing in adoption around
the world, in many countries 2D mammography remains widely prevalent for breast
cancer screening. Many European countries require double-reading for
mammography, yet the global shortage of mammography professionals makes this particularly
challenging in many cases,” said Axel Gräwingholt, MD, a radiologist 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 provides clinicians critical tools that can lead to improved
outcomes for all.”
iCAD also plans to incorporate
Google Health’s mammography AI technology into ProFound AI Risk, the world’s
first clinical decision support tool that provides an accurate short-term
breast cancer risk estimation that is truly personalized for each person. This
is the only commercially available technology that can prospectively identify 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 critical information that can help them tailor screening
regimens for patients, based on their personal risk, rather than a
one-size-fits-all age-based screening program that is the case in many
countries.
“iCAD’s Breast AI technologies are
revolutionizing breast cancer screening by making it more accurate, efficient
and personalized. With the addition of Google Health’s technology, we are
positioned to improve the performance of our algorithms for both 2D and 3D
mammography, which will further strengthen our market leadership position and
drive worldwide adoption,” added Ms. Stevens. “This partnership will enable us
to take advantage of Google Health’s strengths, technological capabilities and
resources as a global leader in AI. By joining forces with Google Health, we
are providing a pathway to further elevate our portfolio and deliver it on a global
scale.”
Expanding access via
cloud-based offerings
In addition to licensing Google
Health’s mammography AI technology, iCAD will also leverage Google Cloud’s secure, scalable infrastructure
to begin transforming its delivery model from an on-premise suite of solutions
to cloud-hosted solutions. The ability to expand cloud-hosted solutions into
new regions can help the company scale access to AI-based tools in underserved
regions that are constrained by infrastructure challenges.
Google Cloud currently supports a
wide variety of healthcare systems and workflows, with the goal of facilitating
secure, continuous patient care, empowering healthcare professionals with
collaboration and productivity tools, and making better clinical and
operational decisions based on data analytics and insights. By integrating with
Google Cloud, iCAD customers will be able to deploy and scale iCAD’s solutions
more seamlessly, offering unparalleled interoperability and the potential to
expand access on a global scale.
“With customers in more than 200
countries and territories worldwide, Google Cloud is used pervasively across a
range of industries, and it is particularly well optimized for healthcare imaging
AI delivery. This partnership will improve our ability to expand our
addressable market and accelerate the commercialization of our own cloud
offering,” said Ms. Stevens. “Healthcare providers are increasingly moving
away from locally deployed systems in favor of virtual or remote settings. 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.”
About iCAD, Inc.
Headquartered in
Nashua, NH, iCAD® is a global medical technology leader providing innovative
cancer detection and therapy solutions. For more information, visit www.icadmed.com.
About Google Health
Google
Health is our company-wide effort to help billions of people be healthier. We
work toward this vision by meeting people in their everyday moments and
empowering them to stay healthy and partnering with care teams and the public
health community to provide more accurate, accessible, and equitable care. Our
teams are applying our expertise and technology to improve health outcomes
globally – with high-quality information and tools to help people manage their
health and wellbeing, solutions to transform care delivery, research to
catalyze the use of artificial intelligence for the screening and diagnosis of
disease, and data and insights to the public health community. https://health.google/
Forward-Looking Statements
Certain statements contained in this News Release constitute
“forward-looking statements” within the meaning of the Private Securities
Litigation Reform Act of 1995, including statements about the expansion of access
to the Company’s products, improvement of performance, acceleration of
adoption, expected benefits of ProFound AI®, the benefits of the Company’s
products, and future prospects for the Company’s technology platforms and
products. Such forward-looking statements involve a number of known and unknown
risks, uncertainties and other factors which may cause the actual results,
performance, or achievements of the Company to be materially different from any
future results, performance, or achievements expressed or implied by such
forward-looking statements. Such factors include, but are not limited, to the
Company’s ability to achieve business and strategic objectives, the willingness
of patients to undergo mammography screening in light of risks of potential exposure
to Covid-19, whether mammography screening will be treated as an essential
procedure, whether ProFound AI will improve reading efficiency, improve
specificity and sensitivity, reduce false positives and otherwise prove to be
more beneficial for patients and clinicians, the impact of supply and
manufacturing constraints or difficulties on our ability to fulfill our orders,
uncertainty of future sales levels, to defend itself in litigation matters,
protection of patents and other proprietary rights, product market acceptance,
possible technological obsolescence of products, increased competition,
government regulation, changes in Medicare or other reimbursement policies,
risks relating to our existing and future debt obligations, competitive
factors, the effects of a decline in the economy or markets served by the
Company; and other risks detailed in the Company’s filings with the Securities
and Exchange Commission. The words “believe,” “demonstrate,” “intend,”
“expect,” “estimate,” “will,” “continue,” “anticipate,” “likely,” “seek,” and
similar expressions identify forward-looking statements. Readers are cautioned
not to place undue reliance on those forward-looking statements, which speak
only as of the date the statement was made. The Company is under no obligation
to provide any updates to any information contained in this release. For
additional disclosure regarding these and other risks faced by iCAD, please see
the disclosure contained in our public filings with the Securities and Exchange
Commission, available on the Investors section of our website at
http://www.icadmed.com and on the SEC’s website at http://www.sec.gov.
Contact:
Media
Inquiries:
Jessica
Burns, iCAD
+1-201-423-4492
Investor
Inquiries:
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Relations