Regina Barzilay, Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Member Board Of Directors at Dewpoint Therapeutics, SAB member at Immunai, shared a post on LinkedIn:
“About 1 in 8 women will develop invasive breast cancer in their lifetime.
However, not all of us are at the same risk. On the positive side, today we have AI tools that can predict with reasonable accuracy risk of breast cancer. Our own model, MIRAI, has been independently validated on over 2M patients from 23 countries. This April, the National Comprehensive Cancer Network (NCCN) updated the guidelines highlighting the power of these models in risk assessment. Despite these great research advancements, in hospitals around the world, breast cancer screening is still not personalized.
Just letting patients know about their risk is not sufficient. The next step is to decide how to intervene. Such interventions include changes in screening frequency, utilization of MRI (a higher resolution modality), and potentially using chemoprevention. If the strategy is implemented correctly, it will save lives and decrease over screening.
This was the topic of a conference organized by Dr. Tanir Allweis, at The Peres Center for Peace and Innovation. Tanir brought together relevant stakeholders – clinicians, specialists in public health, policymakers, and patient advocates. The discussions at the conference not only highlighted the complexity of this translation but also brought many insightful suggestions on how to move things forward.
In Clalit Health Services, this work is already underway. They already validated MIRAI on their patients confirming that it preserves strong performance on the Israeli population. Moreover, Clalit implemented multiple AI tools in patient care, so they can foresee and circumvent many translational barriers.
Now we have a concrete plan for integrating MIRAI into screening. All the credit goes to the amazing group of cllinicians and scientists who lead this work – Dr. Tanir Allweis, Dr. Ran Balicer, Dr. Noa Dagan, Dr. Michal Guindy, Dr. Alina Vodonos Zilberg, Dr. Rom Gutman and other team members from Clalit Health Services and Assuta Medical Centers.
I am sure it will be quite a journey – we all will learn from it.”
Other articles featuring Regina Barzilay and breast cancer on OncoDaily.