On Monday (October 21) local time, GE HealthCare announced on its official website that the company has launched an application "CareIntellect for Oncology" to help clinicians who diagnose and treat cancer save time.
GE Healthcare said that this tool can quickly display the data that oncologists need to help quickly understand the patient's medical history and disease progression. The company says the tool has the potential to free doctors from the hassle of digging through records, allowing them to focus on caring for patients.
A previous Deloitte report showed that healthcare data is extremely difficult to analyze and that up to 97% of data generated by hospitals is not used. This information is stored at different vendors in various file formats and contains images, lab test results, clinical notes and device readings, making it very laborious for doctors to sort through.
Taha Kass-Hout, global chief science and technology officer of GE Healthcare, told the media that it is very time-consuming and frustrating for clinicians to sort through this information. He noted that the company's new system is able to summarize clinical reports and identify when patients have deviated from their treatment plans.
Kass-Hout said the system can alert doctors when patients miss laboratory tests so they can determine the best follow-up treatment plan. "For cancer patients, the treatment process can last for years and require multiple visits."
CareIntellect for Oncology can also help identify relevant clinical trials for which patients are eligible, saving oncologists hours of work, said Chelsea Vane, vice president of digital products.
Traditionally, the process required doctors to browse a database of all available trials and mine patient records to determine if they were appropriate, Vane said. "What we've done is eliminate that."
GE Healthcare mentioned that the purpose of the new program is to save oncologists time and energy, and also allows doctors to view the original records being cited if they want to drill down for more details. The company plans to make the system widely available to U.S. customers in 2025, with the system initially being optimized for prostate and breast cancer.
Kass-Hout said that because the tool is cloud-based, it will drive recurring revenue for GE Healthcare. He added that the oncology tool is the first product under the CareIntellect brand, and the company plans to launch more applications in the future.
In a separate press release, GE Healthcare is exploring how a group of AI agents can work together as a team to support doctors through a tool called Health Companion.
Kass-Hout said Health Companion’s agents will be trained by experts in specific fields, such as radiology, pathology or genomics. The agent can identify whether a specific symptom is a side effect of treatment or a sign of disease progression and suggest next steps.
Ideally, Kass-Hout said, the tool would provide support to the doctors using it, equivalent to a multidisciplinary team working together to reach conclusions. "At this time, this is an early concept. Our goal is to improve the standard of care and relieve undue burden on clinicians."