Do AI+ cancer diagnosis, the giants’ “small abacus” is still difficult to realize

Looking back at the recent news in the field of smart medical care , the actions of the giants continue.

In July last year, Ali released the "DoctorYou" AI system, which was mainly used for medical imaging diagnosis. In August last year, Tencent released the AI ​​medical imaging product "Shadow" for early cancer diagnosis; in September this year, Intel technical team released AI full The Cycle Health Management System helps improve the accuracy and efficiency of breast cancer screening; in less than a month, Google has developed an AI system called Lymph Node Assistant that uses cancer detection algorithms to automatically assess lymph node biopsy.

After combing the giants' AI+ medical products, the intelligent theory of relativity found that “cancer diagnosis” became a common feature of many products. In the past year, BAT, Google, Microsoft, Apple and other technology companies have spared no effort to lay out AI+ medical care, and their first step is to have a tacit understanding of "cancer diagnosis."

Why is "cancer diagnosis" the "darling" of the giants?

External drive: the "call" of the times

Capital is always profitable, broad market space, strong social and technical support, and these advantages brought by the external environment will be the strong support behind AI+ cancer diagnosis.

1. Have requests

On the one hand, China's population is aging, the environmental pollution caused by industrialization and urbanization, and changes in living habits have made the incidence and mortality of Chinese residents significantly improved. Malignant tumors have become the "number one killer" of Chinese residents. The death rate is above 25%.

According to the National Cancer Registry, 264 out of every 100,000 people in China suffer from cancer every year, and 22% of them have cancer in their lifetime; 192 people die every 100,000 people every year.

On the other hand, in 2018, many industries have tacitly mentioned the trend of “consumption upgrade”, while in the medical industry , the phenomenon of “consumption upgrade” also exists. One of the future trends in patient consumption will be to strengthen Early detection and management of tumors will increase people's awareness of early screening.

In sharp contrast to the people's urgent desire, screening cancer in hospitals mainly through testing blood tumor indicators and B-ultrasound, CT, MRI, PET-CT, etc., the sensitivity and specificity of the examination methods are not high, therefore, society It also calls for more effective early screening of new technologies and methods for cancer.

2. Conditional

First, the increase in cancer treatment payers is good for the cancer AI product market. At present, most malignant tumors are included in the scope of reimbursement for different types of medical insurance, such as employee medical insurance, urban residents' medical insurance, and village cooperative medical care. In 2012, the National Basic Drug List first added anti-cancer drugs, including 26 chemical drugs including 2 auxiliary drugs and 1 Chinese medicine have been included in the payment for the major illness medical insurance fund. In 2014, rural medical insurance began to shift to major medical care, and 20 kinds of diseases such as lung cancer and stomach cancer were all included in the scope of major medical insurance.

In addition to medical insurance, there is also commercial insurance. Since 2012, domestic cancer insurance has shown a strong market growth trend under the joint efforts of various factors. According to the "Analysis Report on the Insurance for the Elderly's Anti-cancer Diseases of the Personal Insurance Products Alliance" issued by the China Insurance Industry Association, as of the end of June 2017, the cumulative participation of the elderly anti-cancer disease insurance exceeded 1.44 million, and the premium income exceeded 3.1 billion. Providing more than 156 billion yuan in cancer protection for the market.

Second, the widespread use of computer vision technology can complement cancer AI products. Whether it is the rise of short videos such as vibrato, fast hands, or the proliferation of WeChat emoticons, there is no doubt that human society has entered the era of big data in visual information. Visual technology is also considered a revolutionary technology to advance current economic progress. It has been widely used in many fields, including face recognition, autonomous driving, security monitoring, industrial inspection, beauty, medical imaging and so on.

Driven by various visual data, computer vision technology combined with the Internet can continuously integrate and integrate with medical services, and gradually form a new front-end transformation form, especially machine learning technology based on feature selection, which can be based on multi-scale transformation space. The characteristics of the extraction of massive features, thereby improving the diagnosis of cancer.

Intrinsic drive: the giant's "small abacus"

1. AI+ cancer diagnosis is actually to maximize social expectations

In the public's perception, "cancer" is basically equal to "death" (this is not the case), anti-cancer is fighting against death, and in the battle between man and "god", but there is a product that can bless people even if A small aura, this product will be given unlimited praise.

In addition, the 5-year survival rate of Chinese cancer patients is around 30%, far behind the 60% in the United States and Japan. In this case, people's expectations for cancer prevention are not high, and related technical products are also It is difficult to get people's full trust and dependence. In people's eyes, it is quite normal for cancer diagnostic AI products to be poorly done. After all, the ability of human doctors is very limited.

Therefore, a little progress in new technology may get positive feedback from people. This is equivalent to a student who always scores 30 points in the exam. Suddenly enough to pass the pass line, even if it is not the best, parents will still feel gratified. This is why many AI products continue to emphasize that their accuracy rate is higher than human diagnosis.

2. "Bet" cancer diagnosis is actually the basis for the dimension reduction attack of medical imaging diagnosis.

Medical imaging diagnosis is an important basis for medical treatment and one of the most important diagnostic criteria in clinical data. Medical imaging is divided into two parts, one is medical imaging, that is, image reconstruction, using AI to achieve low-dose imaging, rapid imaging and so on. The other is image analysis, which is to reduce the workload of doctors through image intelligent recognition technology.

The giants seized the track for cancer diagnosis, in fact, they adopted the strategy of "smashing the thief first." The use of artificial intelligence technology in cancer diagnosis is due to the variety of cancers and complex pathology. It can integrate more image analysis data, let the product "learn" the medical knowledge of experts, simulate doctor's thinking and diagnostic reasoning. The difficulty in the prevention and treatment of cancer is well known. From the perspective of public cognition, if the accuracy of the cancer detection algorithm is high enough, is it not a diagnosis of other diseases? If AI products can enter the entire medical aid diagnosis field with cancer as the entrance, patients will have more treatment options.

Difficulties in realizing, AI+ cancer diagnosis requires more patience

The imagination of the giants is very good, but the "face" always comes too fast. Even though IBM's Watson Health System has a well-established oncology system, it has also fallen in disagreement with MD Anderson, a well-known oncology hospital. Watson signed an agreement with MD Anderson in 2012 to jointly develop a "oncologist consultant". (Oncology Expert Advisor), only four years later, the audit office of the University of Texas issued a 48-page audit report on the project, ending the continued cooperation.

There are many reasons for terminating the cooperation, but one of the factors is that the “oncologist consultant” is difficult to successfully promote to other hospitals, even though MD Anderson spent $62 million on the entire project. There are always too many gaps between ideals and reality, and the difficulty of realizing it becomes a problem for today's AI cancer products. This is just a "big loss" for the hospital. If it is placed in the country, the $62 million is probably the bill that the giants have to pay.

There are two main reasons for exploring the reasons.

On the one hand, in the field of medical payment, we also mentioned above that insurance institutions are strengthening the protection of patients, but this protection essentially restricts the development of medical institutions, and the revenue of medical institutions depends on the insurance payment rules. Non-patient self-funded expenses, which also determines the difficulty for medical institutions to find effective C-end profit methods and marketing methods, which also restricts the iteration of products and technologies in medical institutions.

On the other hand, AI is still an emerging field. The entry of medical institutions requires a lot of manpower, material resources and capital investment, but the hospital's public welfare determines that it needs to face long-term losses. This feature requires enterprises to have too strong exit deadlines. In the process of product landing, long-term strategic capital is needed, and this long-term consumption has also caused the giants to suffer frequently in this field.

in conclusion:

"Cancer", these two words are too ruthless and terrible, so when the giants have entered the AI+ cancer diagnosis, it is actually a good thing that everyone likes to see - if the company can make use of its own technology and capital accumulation The medical products not only form a good brand awareness, but also bring hope to many life-threatening patients.

Accessories

Accessories,Curing Light Meter,Dental Curing Light Meter,Economic Dental Curing Light Meter

Rolence Enterprise Inc. , https://www.rolencedent.com