Israeli AI tech aims to transform patient care for the better
“The imaging AI allows a clinician to see the progression of COVID-19 in the lungs, and helps the doctor decide if the patient needs to go to the ICU, needs a ventilator, or if the condition of the patient is not critical.”
By ALAN ROSENBAUMZebra Medical Vision CEO Ohad Arazi
Speaking at the virtual UAE-Israel Business Summit, Ohad Arazi, CEO of Zebra Medical Vision Ltd., said that artificial intelligence, commonly known as AI, can transform patient care by teaching computers to read images and automatically provide diagnosis insights and better prioritize cases.Arazi, in an interview with The Jerusalem Post’s news editor, Maayan Hoffman, explained that medical imaging, which is one of the most critical domains in healthcare, and which is often utilized in acute care situations, can be leveraged to shed light on chronic diseases which are underreported. Because healthcare systems already possess repositories containing thousands of patient images, solutions like Zebra Medical Vision’s can be utilized to comb through the existing image repositories to find and flag anomalies where patients may be at risk for specific chronic conditions.“We can use AI to mine preexisting data to identify patients who can benefit from interventions that could contribute to their health, reduce risk of disease, reduce hospitalizations, and improve outcomes through early detection,” said Arazi, adding: “This ultimately not only provides better clinical outcomes for patients but reduces operational costs significantly for healthcare systems by identifying diseases that are commonly overlooked earlier, before more costly treatment would be required.”This past year, to address the COVID-19 pandemic, Arazi explained that Zebra Medical Vision developed an AI- and algorithm-based solution for CT scans that assists doctors in tracking the progression of COVID-19 in patients.“The imaging AI allows a clinician to see the progression of COVID-19 in the lungs, and helps the doctor decide if the patient needs to go to the ICU, needs a ventilator, or if the condition of the patient is not critical.”Zebra Medical Vision also addressed common population health issues by developing solutions, which were FDA-cleared, for detecting potential cardiovascular and osteoporotic risks in patients. Its CCS+ solution can help assess patients’ risks for cardiovascular diseases by assigning a coronary calcium score, a marker for diagnosing coronary artery disease, to images in a data repository.For patients at risk of osteoporotic fractures, Zebra Medical Vision’s VCF solution harnesses the power of AI to help detect potential vertebral compression fractures early before an actual break occurs, which can be severely debilitating.“Early detection measures can impact the patient’s quality of life by treating conditions early through medication, physical therapy, and lifestyle. It empowers physicians to improve their care and patients to drive down their own mortality and morbidity.”
