University Hospitals Birmingham (UHB) has partnered with medical technology company, Qureight, to construct more diverse artificial intelligence (AI) models that accurately reflect communities; a world-first lung disease research partnership. It will help be certain that patients from minority ethnic backgrounds receive better-tailored and effective treatments.

Idiopathic Pulmonary Fibrosis (IPF) is a variety of complex lung disease that affects roughly 50 in every 100,000 people. It causes the lungs to turn into scarred, resulting in severe breathlessness and coughing, and owing to a scarcity of effective medicines and coverings, it currently has a survival time worse than most cancers.

Applying cutting-edge AI tools, to unlock insights from existing IPF patient data, could help extend the lives of hundreds of UK patients every year. Nonetheless, current research data doesn’t all the time reflect the true make-up of communities in Britain.

Birmingham’s diverse population will now provide scientists at Qureight with more diverse data than is usually available, enabling the constructing of artificial intelligence diagnosis models that higher reflect population diversity.

Birmingham is one in every of the UK’s first super-diverse cities in accordance with probably the most recent census, which suggests that nearly all of its residents are from Black, Asian or minority ethnic backgrounds.

That is hugely significant for town’s lung disease clinical teams and researchers, who will probably be using lung scan data to construct on the currently lacking understandings of how complex lung disease manifests and develops in these specific communities.

The aim of the project is to speed up the event of lung disease treatments to enhance outcomes for all patients. That is the primary time that significant volumes of knowledge from minority ethnic people will probably be structured and made available for complex lung disease research and drug development.

Complex inflammatory and scarring lung diseases may be difficult to administer; it will possibly be difficult to choose if the disease is responding to treatment, is stable or is getting worse.

It’s currently mandatory for specialist radiology doctors to analyse CT scan images of the lungs, as a part of the diagnosis and monitoring process. The method is open to interpretation bias and so the final result may not all the time be the identical.

As well as, a shortage of those specialists makes this process slow and difficult. At the identical time, the limited data we’ve got available comes predominantly from white, European patients, who may experience lung disease in a selected way.

Launching this partnership with Qureight is a really significant moment for our team. Allowing access to patient data, that actually reflects the unique diversity of Birmingham’s population, and that will probably be invaluable to the planning and delivery of more equitable patient care – not only in cities like ours.”

Dr Anjali Crawshaw, Consultant Respiratory Physician, University Hospitals Birmingham NHS Foundation Trust.

Qureight’s artificial intelligence, built by their very own team of lung experts, will mix the information from patient scans (e.g. lung and airway volume) with lung function data from tests, blood results, and demographic records. This information will probably be securely and anonymously processed to deliver insights into the presentation, development, and progression of complex lung conditions.

Our partnership with UHB will probably be pivotal to how we harness our world leading AI solutions, to learn patients from across the spectrum of complex lung diseases.

One in every of the most important problems with AI in healthcare is the shortage of applicability to real world patients. AI is already getting used by Qureight in complex lung disease clinical trials in Europe and the USA, but a more diverse patient population is essential to its future success.”

By working in partnership with globally renowned researchers at UHB, we are going to have the ability to depend on their clinical expertise to super-charge medical progress and help rebalance inequalities in our understanding of rare and complicated lung diseases through using the most recent AI technologies.”

Dr Muhunthan Thillai, Consultant Chest Physician, CEO and Co-founder, Qureight.

Source:

University Hospitals Birmingham (UHB)