MEDICAL AI
Helen Frazer has a hot take: “The AI revolution in breast cancer screening is here.”
That doesn’t mean that the pink buses criss-crossing Australia offering free mammograms will soon be staffed by robots. But artificial intelligence will soon radically improve the way those screenings are processed, taking pressure off radiologists and speeding up the delivery of results.
As clinical director of St. Vincent’s Hospital Melbourne and BreastScreen Victoria, Frazer is responsible for overseeing more than 48 breast screening clinics and dispatching two pink buses to every corner of her state. Each is equipped with a mobile 3D mammography unit, making screening free and accessible to any woman over 50 on a biennial basis.
“For 30 years we’ve been screening women for breast cancer – and saving lives,” Frazer says. “It also gave us one of the best datasets in the world.”
Since the first big studies on the efficacy of regular screening for breast cancer were published in the mid 1980s, more than 20 nations – mostly in Europe – have been regularly screening women. But while most of these nationsthree decades of mammograms, results, treatments and outcomes. This single, unified dataset allows Australian researchers to draw clear lines between diagnosis and outcome.
