Venture Cash Is Pouring Into AI that Can Diagnose Diseases. Doctors Aren’t Sure They Can Trust It.
On August 8, 2021, DOTLA reported- Medical imaging AI, which can help diagnose health problems doctors don't always see, is only getting more sophisticated—and more lucrative. Just last month, Tel Aviv-based Aidoc raised $65 million for its AI-powered medical imaging platform and other local companies are attracting investors at a rapid clip.
The software can find, and in some cases, diagnose polyps, tumors or anomalies that may otherwise go undetected by the human eye – a feat that has the potential to save lives. Beyond its most promising attributes, AI-driven technology could also dramatically decrease wait times at hospitals and doctors' offices by automating some of the most tedious work, allowing doctors to see and treat more patients. But critics of the unregulated technology say results can be inconsistent.
Brendan Burke, an emerging tech analyst at Pitchbook, estimates investment in the space has skyrocketed, from $1.6 billion in 2019 to $2.6 billion in 2020.
"[Venture capitalists] have certainly seen enough adoption to justify substantial investments," Burke said. "But there's still uneven adoption overall and a degree of skepticism from health care providers. "
The money is pouring in because most illnesses are diagnosed with a terrifying cocktail of subjectivity and luck, and a hard-to-find tumor could rear its ugly head when it's too late, forcing clinicians to scramble to use invasive (sometimes dangerous) procedures to course correct.
Paul Grand, founder and CEO of MedTech Innovator, a medical technology startup accelerator said interest is gaining traction because investors see the potential for a breakthrough technology — even if it isn't fully proven yet.
"They're not looking for little incremental improvements when they make investments as VCs, they're looking for game-changing, industry needle-moving investments," he said.
Irvine-based Docbot, a gastrointestinal AI startup that has raised $6.5 million according to Pitchbook, developed Ultivision AI to find polyps that could turn cancerous. Most diagnoses come from a doctor's ability to find them through a camera inserted into the GI tract. Created by gastroenterologist William Kames, Docbot uses AI to point out faded or small polyps through the camera lens.
"By doing this, you'll catch more polyps, and thus the colonoscopy will have a higher performance rate in hopefully catching more polyps, so a patient would have less risk of getting colon cancer afterwards." said Docbot CEO Andrew Ritter.
After feeding 50,000 colonoscopy videos through a machine learning algorithm, Docbot put Ultivision AI up next to a panel of physicians to detect polyps in a slew of videos. The AI found 61% more polyps than the panel.
Now, the AI has been trained on more than 10 million images.
Another AI-based tool, Woodland Hills-based Eyenuk, received FDA approval as a medical imaging AI device that can diagnose diabetic retinopathy 10 months ago. The device has been trained on more than two million images and is scattered across 15 different institutions in the US.
Eyenuk's device became useful during the coronavirus pandemic. Nose-to-nose contact is often unavoidable for opthamologists who need to conduct eye exams, but the device could operate autonomously, taking photos of a patient's eyes and diagnosing the problem in a span of minutes.
"[Doctors] want AI to prescreen people's eyes in the community," Frank Cheng, president of Eyenuk, said. "...if there is a need for evaluation and treatment, they then jump in to more efficiently treat the patient."
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