Morning Briefing
Summaries of health policy coverage from major news organizations
Artificial Intelligence Was As Good Or Better Than Doctors At Detecting Lung Cancer In Promising Study
The New York Times: A.I. Took A Test To Detect Lung Cancer. It Got An A.
Computers were as good or better than doctors at detecting tiny lung cancers on CT scans, in a study by researchers from Google and several medical centers. The technology is a work in progress, not ready for widespread use, but the new report, published Monday in the journal Nature Medicine, offers a glimpse of the future of artificial intelligence in medicine. One of the most promising areas is recognizing patterns and interpreting images — the same skills that humans use to read microscope slides, X-rays, M.R.I.s and other medical scans. (Grady, 5/20)
Stat: Google's AI Boosts Accuracy Of Lung Cancer Diagnosis, Study Shows
A study published in Nature Medicine reported that the algorithm, trained on 42,000 patient CT scans taken during a National Institutes of Health clinical trial, outperformed six radiologists in determining whether patients had cancer. It detected 5% more cancers and cut false positives — when cancer is suspected though a nodule is harmless — by 11% from reviewing a single scan. It performed on par with the radiologists when prior images of patients were also included in the evaluation. (Ross, 5/20)
