Q&A: Using AI to expand access to breast cancer screening

Though breast cancer treatment can be highly effective, women across the globe face drastically different outcomes depending on where they live. Geetha Manjunath, founder and CEO of Bengaluru, India-based Niramai Health Analytix, set out to improve access to screening when a close family member died of breast cancer in her early 40s not long after receiving a diagnosis. Manjunath sat down with MobiHealthNews to discuss how Niramai's artificial intelligence-enabled screening system works, the importance of explainability when using AI in healthcare and what's next for the company. MobiHealthNews: Can you tell me a little bit about how the Thermalytix system works for breast cancer screening? If you look at the mortality rates across different countries, there is a huge variation in the number of people who survive breast cancer. Also, mammography, which is the standard for breast cancer detection, does not work as well on younger women below 45 years old, because they have what is called dense breasts. So with all this, what Niramai has developed is an affordable, accessible method of detecting breast cancer in women of all age groups and all breast densities. We also have a home screening for breast cancer screening. MHN: So the cancer report is not saying, you 100% have breast cancer. It's a screening test, which means that out of 100 women screened, we identify those nine or 10 women who need to go for a follow-up diagnostic workup – maybe another mammogram, or 3D mammogram, or more sophisticated breast MRI, or a breast ultrasound. For example, in breast cancer, we looked at pregnant women, we looked at people who are menstruating, we looked at people who had fibroadenomas. You just say cancer, but which breast and what happened?" So we now have a three page PDF report that is automatically generated, which gives scores for the left breast and the right breast.