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Cancer Moonshot | Trans-Atlantic Ultrasound
February 9, 2022
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Together with
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“Let there be no doubt, now that I am president, this is a presidential White House priority – Period.”
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President Joe Biden announcing the White House’s “reignited” Cancer Moonshot initiative.
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The Biden administration “reignited” the US’ Cancer Moonshot initiative, setting a goal to halve the country’s age-adjusted cancer death rate within the next 25 years. Here’s how they plan to achieve this “Moonshot” of a goal, and what that means for imaging.
Cancer Moonshot History – Biden spearheaded the Obama administration’s Cancer Moonshot initiative, inspired by losing his son to brain cancer. The 7-year initiative used $1.8B in federal funding to improve cancer therapeutics, prevention, and detection through scientific discovery, collaboration, and data sharing.
The Reignited Moonshot – The revamped initiative inherits these same goals and approaches, while adding new focus areas and operational structures:
- Overcoming the COVID pandemic’s cancer screening backlog
- Addressing inequity in cancer incidence, detection, and care
- Developing new treatments for rare and childhood cancers
- Fast-tracking the development of multi-cancer tests
- Improving the experience of cancer survivors and caregivers
- Leveraging data to “turn our cancer care system into a learning system”
- Creating a cancer research funding program modeled after DARPA
- Appointing federal Cancer Moonshot leaders to coordinate this work
Imaging Alignment – Any government attempt to overcome cancer screening backlogs and to make early detection mainstream would surely result in more imaging, while the Moonshot initiative’s focus on “learning from data” could hold imaging AI upsides. That said, the announcement placed a much brighter spotlight on non-imaging areas (blood tests, vaccines, treatments), and few people on the clinical side of radiology believe more imaging is necessarily better for patients.
Moonshot Critics – The Cancer Moonshot initiative has its fair share of critics, who argued that cutting cancer deaths by 50% would require “curing” cancer (not just catching and treating it), expanding screening has downsides (radiation, unnecessary treatments), and that initiatives like this are largely done for appearances.
The Takeaway
The White House just made the fight against cancer a top administrative priority, meaning that a lot more government attention and resources are on the way, and notable changes in cancer imaging policies and volumes might follow.
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How Magnolia Regional and Nuance Caught More Cancers Sooner
Discover how Magnolia Regional Health Center started catching more cancers sooner when it adopted Nuance’s PowerScribe Lung Cancer Screening Program and PowerScribe Follow-up Manager.
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- Trans-Atlantic Tele-Ultrasound: New Jersey’s RWJ University Hospital just deployed the US’ first FDA-approved tele-cardiac ultrasound, using AdEcho Tech’s MELODY robotic ultrasound system (combines robotic arm, ultrasound, and video conferencing) to perform and transmit several hours of scans to France. RWJU is optimistic about tele-ultrasound’s potential, suggesting that it could help overcome current in-hospital challenges (e.g. sonographer shortages & injuries, COVID exposure) and expand diagnostic access (rural clinics, pharmacies, senior facilities).
- NYU’s Breast MRI AI Breakthrough: A NYU team released what they believe is “the best and most extensively evaluated” breast MRI AI system, backing those claims up with some impressive results. The team trained and evaluated the model using over 20k contrast-enhanced breast MRIs, and first tested it against an internal dataset, finding that it rivaled radiologists’ breast cancer detection (AUCs: 0.92 AI vs. 0.88 Rads) and even improved radiologist accuracy (+0.07 AUC with AI support). NYU’s breast MRI AI tool also generalized across demographics (age, race, MRI brand) and cancer subtypes when tested against international datasets, and showed potential to reduce breast biopsies by 20%.
- UTSWMC’s Rural Outreach: A new JACR paper detailed how a University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center initiative significantly increased lung cancer screening among rural patients. UTSWMC worked with community partners to create a rural screening recruitment program (awareness, telephone eligibility reviews, expanded coverage) that resulted in 570 referrals during the first year. Of the 488 patients who were eligible for LDCT, 381 were scheduled for LDCT screening, and 334 completed their exams, amounting to a $430 cost per patient.
- Arterys Added to Wellbeing Marketplace: Wellbeing Software announced a partnership with AMG Medtech (Arterys’ UK distributor) to make Arterys’ full range of clinical applications (Cardiac, Lung, Chest MSK, Neuro and Breast) available on Wellbeing’s AI Connect Marketplace. Wellbeing Software has actively expanded its Marketplace over the last few years (also includes Qure.ai, Contextflow, Annalise.ai, others), although Arterys’ broad portfolio might make this Wellbeing’s most significant addition so far. This is also a testament to the Arterys platform’s versatility, considering that a number of these solutions are developed by Arterys partners.
- NHS Bias Assessments: The NHS announced plans to pilot a new AI bias assessment method as part of its initiative to improve ethical healthcare AI adoption. The NHS will perform Algorithmic Impact Assessments on all algorithms before developers can access NHS data, with the goal of eliminating bias much earlier in the AI commercialization process.
- SyntheticMR & Hyland: SyntheticMR and Hyland Healthcare launched a new partnership that will leverage Hyland’s PACSgear Modlink solution to make SyMRI NEURO’s brain tissue quantitative data directly available on radiologist reporting systems (eliminating manual steps). SyntheticMR will actually carry Hyland products as part of this alliance, which is unique compared to SyntheticMR’s other PACS partnerships, and should allow it to better support its clients’ quantitative workflows.
- Staff Shortage Concerns: The American College of Healthcare Executives’ annual survey of 300+ hospital CEOs found that personnel shortages are now their top concern, taking the place of financial challenges, which have consistently held the top spot since 2004. Within personnel shortages, 94% of CEOs ranked a deficit of registered nurses as the most pressing, followed by technicians (85%), therapists (67%), and PCPs (45%).
- Philips Lumify Adds Hemodynamics: Philips announced the addition of Pulse Wave Doppler for hemodynamics to its Lumify handheld ultrasound system, allowing hemodynamic assessment and measurements at the point-of-care. The Lumify’s new blood flow quantification capabilities expand the handheld’s diagnostic applications across a range of specialties (cardiology, vascular, urology, obstetrics, gynecology).
- Vertebral Fracture Radiomics: A new EJR study detailed a CT radiomics-based approach for differentiating acute and chronic osteoporotic vertebral fractures. The researchers trained the model to produce 14 radiomic signatures (trained w/ 103 spinal CTs, validated w/ 44), achieving 0.90 and 0.82 respective AUCs with the training and validation sets. When used as part of a quantitative nomogram combining CT fracture line and radiomic features, the researchers achieved 0.93 and 0.86 AUCs.
- Midstate Continues CT Expansion: Connecticut’s Midstate Radiology Associates (MRA, 24 locations, ~45 rads) continued its regional expansion, acquiring New Haven Radiology Associates’ two imaging centers. The acquisition also creates an alliance between MRA and imaging giant, Rayus Radiology, which maintains its minority stake in both locations. Midstate has grown considerably in recent years (in 2015 it had just 2 locations, 11 rads), following a number of acquisitions executed without PE support.
- Brainomix’s IPF Biomarker: Brainomix announced the validation of a new version of its e-ILD software, which automates the quantification of idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF) biomarkers in CT scans, and could improve IPF assessments and outcomes (vs. traditional clinico-physiological markers). In its clinical trial, Brainomix showed that combining e-ILD’s imaging biomarkers with respiratory physiology would improve detection of high-risk IPF patients (2x improvement estimating transplant-free survival), while ongoing measurements would improve treatment response tracking.
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GE’s Future Forward CTs
See how GE Healthcare’s CT lineup is helping radiologists and technologists become more efficient through effortless workflow, new AI efficiencies, and a unique approach to scanner modularity.
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- Over 9 out of 10 people who should be screened for lung cancer aren’t, and nearly 50% of lung cancer cases are caught in the advanced stages. We know from prostate and breast cancer screening that clear guidelines and increased screening saves lives. But lung cancer screening has been challenging. Riverain strives to make everything about the lungs clearer, so they assembled this resource page for anyone interested in starting or improving their lung screening program.
- Variable heart rates and organ motion can make cardiac imaging a challenge for CT technologists. Discover how intelligent imaging guidance with Siemens Healthineers’ myExam Companion can help overcome these challenges, without compromising quality and consistency.
- Do you have the tools and knowledge to successfully navigate MACRA? See how Change Healthcare’s Quality Reporting Solution can help you succeed with MIPS without disrupting your workflow.
- See how and why Nanox.AI sees a much bigger future for public health AI than many of us imagine in this Imaging Wire Q&A with Zohar Elhanani.
- This Diagnostic and Interventional Cardiology article details the unique advantages of cloud-based CVIS systems (off-property access, team collaboration), with insights from one Mississippi-based physician on the benefits of Fujifilm Healthcare’s VidiStar CVIS.
- CD burning issues? Check out this one-minute video showing how Novarad’s CryptoChart image sharing solution allows patients to easily access and share their medical images using personalized, highly secure QR codes (not CDs).
- United Imaging’s uCT ATLAS ultra-premium CT scanner delivers imaging that covers it all. That means 16 cm whole organ coverage, enabling a non-contrast brain in a half-second with a single rotation. That also means whole-heart coverage combined with 0.25 second rotation speed, providing high-quality and low-dose images within one heartbeat.
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