Google Health AI and Google Cloud technology will be integrated into iCad's portfolio to elevate performance and expand access to the company's breast imaging technology.

Amanda Pedersen

December 1, 2022

3 Min Read
Google headquarters in Mountain View, CA
Image courtesy of Lisa Werner / Alamy Stock Photo

Two years ago, Google published groundbreaking research showing that its artificial intelligence model bested radiologists in accurately identifying breast cancer on mammography images. Now, Google has selected iCAD for its first commercial partnership to introduce the technology into clinical practice.

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. iCAD will also leverage Google Cloud to accelerate the time to market for its cloud-hosted offerings.

"At Google Health, we are very fortunate to have a mission where we can tackle a lot of these really thorny and big problems, especially when it comes to AI and healthcare, so we're really good at generating lots of great research, lots of great ideas, things like that," Daniel Tse, a product manager at Google Health, told MD+DI. "iCAD has amazing distribution as well as a history of working with patients and clinicians ... iCAD fit the bill on many different levels."

By leveraging Google Cloud, iCAD will be able to expand access to the AI-driven technology, especially in areas of the globe where infrastructure is constrained, Stacey Stevens, president and CEO at iCad, told MD+DI. iCAD will be responsible for validating the combined technology and taking it through the regulatory process, and Stevens said she expects the company to be ready to launch the algorithm representing combined technology from Google and iCAD about a year from now. The company will be pursuing regulatory approvals in the United States and Europe in parallel.

"What really makes this partner so poweful is how aligned we are on the mission and the purpose of it," Stevens said. "Neither iCad nor Google wants to develop technology for technology's sake, we really want to develop technology for impact and making a positive impact on population health and bringing greater access, particularly to women in underserved areas of the globe."

iCAD also plans to incorporate Google Health’s mammography AI technology into its ProFound AI Risk, a clinical decision support tool designed to provide an accurate short-term breast cancer risk estimation that is personalized for each person. iCAD says 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.

“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," said Greg Corrado, head of health AI, at Google. "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.”

About the Author(s)

Amanda Pedersen

Amanda Pedersen is a veteran journalist and award-winning columnist with a passion for helping medical device professionals connect the dots between the medtech news of the day and the bigger picture. She has been covering the medtech industry since 2006.

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