Israeli MedTech company Ibex Medical Analytics Ltd, which provides AI-powered cancer diagnostics in pathology, announced the deployment of its leading product Galen platform, which is a medical treatment and diagnostics tool for prostate cancer, in Carolina, Puerto Rico. Deployed through CorePlus Servicios Clínicos y Patológicos, LLC, a high complexity CLIA-certified clinical and anatomic pathology laboratory, this marks the first AI-based pathology solution for prostate cancer to be deployed on U.S. soil.
Relieving workloads from a depleted cancer-focused pathologist workforce
In a conversation with Geektime, Ibex CEO and co-founder Joseph Mossel noted that the company is still looking to expand into mainland America as well “Our Galen Prostate and Galen Breast are the first-ever AI-powered cancer diagnostics solutions in routine clinical use in pathology and deployed in labs around the world, including the UK, France, the US, and Israel… We are engaged in discussions with several healthcare providers in the mainland US regarding deployment of our AI solutions.”
By utilizing Whole Slide Imaging (WSI) to digitize traditional glass slides in combination with Galen Prostate platform, both patients and urologists will benefit from rapid, accurate and insightful results. The company claims that by leveraging the AI technologies, diagnostics will become easier, reducing the time of wait for patient results and providing a new standard for diagnosis and treatment of prostate cancer.
“It is with great pleasure that we announce that pathologists at CorePlus have reported in excess of 500 prostate cases using a novel AI solution developed by our partner, Ibex Medical Analytics from Israel,” said Dr. Juan C. Santa Rosario, CorePlus Medical Director. “The AI algorithm, which is part of the Galen Prostate solution, will allow us to detect cancer and other clinically significant features in prostate cases with greater precision and sensitivity. All prostate cases processed at CorePlus are now evaluated by the AI system as part of our routine clinical practice, providing us with unprecedented quality control,” said Dr. Santa who led the process of digital pathology transformation and AI solution validation.
There has been a surge in demand for diagnostic tests in recent years, alongside an increase in cancer prevalence. However, these trends coincide with a decline in the number of pathologists who specialize in diagnosing cancer, resulting in greater workloads. In the United States alone, the number of pathologists decreased by nearly 20% in the past decade. Moreover, to this day, pathologists often diagnose cancer by examining biopsies through a microscope, a manual process that is timely and prone to human error.
With the COVID-19 global pandemic keeping patients from potential life-saving biopsies, Ibex CEO Mossel empowers telehealth solutions by noting that “during this time, telemedicine has received a huge boost, and while you can’t perform biopsies remotely, digital pathology and AI technologies allow for more flexibility and facilitate remote cancer diagnosis.”
Ibex’s deployment of digital pathology and AI-based solutions at CorePlus will support pathologists in enhancing diagnostic accuracy and efficiency. For validation purposes, CorePlus tested the Galen Prostate solution on 1,301 prostate tissue slides digitized using 3DHISTECH scanners. The statistical results showed that the solution was extremely accurate in detecting cancer, with 96.9% Specificity, 96.5% Sensitivity, and a 0.994 Area Under the Curve (AUC) score. The WSI implementation and laboratory conversion to a digital platform was conducted by SYNDEO, a technology firm specializing in the development of innovative diagnostic platforms and solutions to support clinical processes.
“We are proud to be the first laboratory in the Americas to reach this breakthrough by combining an AI-powered solution with digital pathology imaging to ascertain the diagnosis of prostate cancer,” said Mariano de Socarraz, CorePlus CEO.
Ibex Medical Analytics’s headquarters are based in Tel Aviv. The company was founded in 2016 by CEO Joseph Mossel and CTO Chaim Linhart, PhD. Ibex has raised over $13 million to date.
