iCAD and Google Health Expand Integration of Google’s AI Technology with iCAD’s ProFound Breast Health Suite for 2D Mammography for Use as Independent Reader
Worldwide commercialization agreement offers potential to ease radiologist workload and reduce healthcare disparities for women
NASHUA, N.H., August 14, 2023 – iCAD, Inc. (NASDAQ: ICAD), a global medical technology leader providing innovative cancer detection and therapy solutions, today announced it signed an amendment to its development and commercialization agreement with Google Health, which will enable iCAD to integrate Google’s AI technology with its ProFound Breast Health Suite for 2D Mammography for use worldwide upon regulatory approval as an independent reader for breast cancer screening for 20 years.
“The conventional double-reading workflow utilized by most countries, where mammograms are assessed by two separate radiologists, has become increasingly challenging due to the scarcity of radiologists worldwide. As the global radiologist shortage continues to impact patient care, healthcare organizations are seeking clinically-proven solutions to help their radiology departments run more efficiently and adeptly handle the workload in front of them. By leveraging the remarkable capabilities of ProFound Detection, iCAD seeks to provide a viable alternative to the current double-reading workflow,” said Dana Brown, President and CEO of iCAD, Inc.
ProFound Detection is a high-performance, deep learning cancer detection solution that is clinically proven to improve detection and workflow efficiency for radiologists reading mammography. Available for both 2D and 3D mammography, it rapidly and accurately analyzes each mammography image, and alerts radiologists of suspicious areas that may warrant a closer look. A growing body of evidence confirms ProFound Detection improves accuracy and efficiency for radiologists, empowering them to find more cancers while reducing the rate of false positives and unnecessary recalls.[i],[ii]
iCAD signed a strategic development and commercialization agreement with Google Health in November 2022 to integrate Google’s AI technology into iCAD’s leading-edge portfolio of breast imaging AI solutions, including ProFound Detection.
“Combining Google’s artificial intelligence (AI) technology with our leading-edge ProFound Breast Health Suite of AI solutions will enhance our technology and expand access to the technology to millions of women
and providers worldwide,” added Ms. Brown. “Furthermore, Google has already been exploring the use of its technology as an independent reader, with extremely promising results.”
In an independent study of six radiologists, Google’s mammography AI system outperformed all of the human readers, with an area under the receiver operating characteristic curve (AUC-ROC) that was greater than the AUC-ROC for the average radiologist by an absolute margin of 11.5%. Researchers also ran a simulation in which Google’s AI system participated in the double-reading process used in the UK and found
the AI system maintained non-inferior performance and reduced the workload of the second reader by 88%.[iii]
“Technology can and should play a fundamental role in democratizing access to high-quality healthcare. But one company can’t make this a reality alone,” said Greg Corrado, Ph.D., Head of Health AI, Google.
“iCAD is a proven leader in the breast cancer domain, and through this collaboration we hope to not only alleviate the increasing burdens on radiologists worldwide, but also reduce disparities in healthcare across the globe.”
“At iCAD, we believe where one lives should not determine whether one lives. As part of our agreement with Google, and to demonstrate our commitment to enhancing patient outcomes worldwide, iCAD will provide a portion of its breast cancer screening for underserved individuals in certain countries at no cost,”
added Ms. Brown. “With thousands of installations worldwide, our Breast AI solutions are already the most widely used technologies of their kind. Our solutions level the playing field and provide a more holistic view of each woman’s present and future, optimizing every patient’s opportunity to find cancers
earlier and live better lives.”
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.
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
https://www.icadmed.com and on the SEC’s website at http://www.sec.gov.
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[i] Graewingholt
A, Rossi PG. (2021). Retrospective analysis of the effect on interval cancer rate of adding an artificial intelligence algorithm to the reading process for two-dimensional full-field digital mammography. J Med Screen. 0(0) 1-3.
[ii] Conant,
E et al. (2019). Improving Accuracy and Efficiency with Concurrent Use of Artificial Intelligence for Digital Breast Tomosynthesis. Radiology: Artificial Intelligence. 1 (4). Accessed via https://pubs.rsna.org/doi/10.1148/ryai.2019180096
[iii] McKinney,
S.M., Sieniek, M., Godbole, V. et al. International evaluation of an AI system for breast cancer screening. Nature 577, 89–94 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-019-1799-6