AI-Powered Mobile Clinics Bring Life-Saving Breast Cancer Screenings to Rural India
A groundbreaking initiative is leveraging the power of artificial intelligence to deliver low-cost, high-quality breast cancer screenings to thousands of women in rural India, addressing a critical gap in healthcare access.
An unassuming van, operated by the nonprofit Health Within Reach Foundation, is at the heart of this effort. The vehicle utilizes an AI solution developed by MedCognetics, a Dallas, Texas-based company participating in the NVIDIA Inception program for startups, to triage mammogram data onsite. To date, the mobile clinic has screened data from over 3,500 patients, with a remarkable 90% having never received a mammogram before.
“Developing countries generally have a lot of load on their existing healthcare institutions,” explained a senior official with the Health Within Reach Foundation. “This tech-enabled mobile healthcare program is solving a lot of healthcare access problems because, with the help of AI, we are able to bring high-quality care to peoples’ doorsteps.”
The program, focused on areas surrounding Pune, India, has identified approximately 8% of screened patients – roughly 300 women – with abnormal findings. These individuals are then referred to specialists for further evaluation and potential treatment. Crucially, the AI has already played a role in connecting 24 cancer-positive patients with care before their conditions could advance.
“Using our software built with NVIDIA technology, they identified 24 cancer-positive patients and connected them to treatment before the disease could progress further,” stated Ron Nag, CEO and president of MedCognetics. “This is the way I want to see AI implemented around the world, to help people.”
Advancing AI Capabilities for Early Detection
MedCognetics specializes in developing FDA-cleared AI systems designed as software as a medical device. These systems can be deployed on both the NVIDIA IGX Orin industrial-grade edge AI platform, utilizing the NVIDIA Holoscan platform for real-time sensor processing, and on NVIDIA Tensor Core GPUs hosted in the cloud.
The company’s comprehensive suite of software for breast cancer screening includes algorithms for cancer triage, alongside features currently undergoing regulatory review, such as cancer detection, breast density assessment, and a risk analysis model capable of predicting a patient’s likelihood of developing breast cancer within a year. The integration of IGX Orin is also enabling the development of advanced image denoising capabilities, also slated for regulatory submission.
A significant challenge in digital mammography is patient motion, which can introduce artifacts into images. MedCognetics’ AI models are designed to address this issue by realigning images, providing radiologists with a clearer view for more accurate diagnoses.
Bridging the Healthcare Accessibility Gap with Edge AI
A key component of the Health Within Reach Women Cancer Screening Van’s success is the rapid inference facilitated by India-based cloud resources. This allows staff to quickly identify high-risk cases and connect them with radiologists for prioritized review.
“Radiologists don’t travel with the cancer screening vans — once the van comes back to its urban hub, the mammogram images are uploaded onto our system for radiologist review,” explained a senior official at the Health Within Reach Foundation. “In the future, fast AI analysis through hardware on the van could let us triage patients onsite, even at the remotest of areas were connectivity is lacking.”
When the MedCognetics software flags a potential tumor, the Health Within Reach team immediately shares the patient’s mammography images with a radiologist for detailed analysis, accelerating the diagnostic process and ensuring timely intervention.
“One of the biggest challenges is finding small tumors,” noted a company representative from MedCognetics. “When we started, all the radiologists we spoke to said they didn’t want AI to help them see tumors the size of raisins or golf balls — they wanted AI to help them see the tumors that are so small they might easily be missed.”
Reaching Underserved Populations
The impact of this technology is particularly significant for the nearly two-thirds of the Indian population living in rural areas, where access to preventative healthcare is often limited.
“Breast cancer tumors are generally painless, so there is a propensity for women in communities where healthcare is expensive or hard to access to postpone screenings or further investigation,” explained a senior official with the Health Within Reach Foundation. “The majority of new cases are diagnosed in advanced stages, a factor that directly affects patient survival rates. That’s where regular, affordable and easily accessible mammogram screenings can make a significant difference.”
This innovative approach demonstrates the potential of AI to democratize healthcare, bringing life-saving screenings to those who need them most and ultimately improving patient outcomes.
