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Google and Bayer plan to help radiologists gain new insights into vast amounts of medical imaging data with the power of AI.
Google Cloud has announced a partnership with health company Bayer to bring AI technology to radiologists to support healthcare.
The partnership will see Google Cloud’s technology – including its generative AI tools – be used to enhance Bayer’s platform to help create AI-powered medical imaging products. The two companies claim this work could lead to improved services for patients.
Radiologists specialise in diagnosing and treating injuries and diseases using medical imaging procedures such as x-rays, CT scans and ultrasounds. A study from 2021 referenced by the two companies claimed 90pc of all healthcare data consists of medical imaging data.
Google and Bayer also claimed that billions of medical images are scanned every year and that this figure continues to grow. The goal is to use AI-powered analytics tools to help radiologists handle and analyse enormous amounts of health data.
“Radiology plays a vital role in healthcare, and the need to efficiently and accurately uncover insights and deliver solutions at scale that can improve patient outcomes has never been greater,” said Bayer’s president of radiology Nelson Ambrogio.
“Through the collaboration with Google Cloud, our joint efforts will help organisations in the healthcare and life science industry transform the growing amounts of data into valuable and impactful insights, saving radiologists time and helping them optimise their important work for the benefit of patients.”
The new platform is built on Google Cloud and uses tools like Vertex AI, BigQuery, Healthcare API and Chronicle. The collaboration aims to help organisations and developers build scalable AI-powered medical imaging software products. The two companies plan to release a first version of this platform later this year in the EU and US for extended testing.
Various experts have predicted that that AI will have a substantial impact on medical diagnostics and treatment this year, while companies such as Google and Microsoft are racing to bring their products to this sector.
But there are also concerns that AI-powered systems could also push medical misconceptions and present privacy risks.
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