The National Healthcare Group, the health cluster covering central and north Singapore, seeks to integrate an AI assistant into its radiology workflow.

According to a media release, the group will be deploying South Korea-based Lunit's AI solution for chest X-ray analysis in its primary care diagnostic radiology systems. 

The Lunit INSIGHT CXR will be piloted for 10 months at the Geylang Polyclinic beginning in October. Findings from this will inform the full roll out of the solution in the rest of the NHG polyclinics. 

WHY IT MATTERS

Until recently, radiologists at NHG polyclinics manually reviewed, analysed and interpreted CXR images. 

The AI solution from Lunit will supplement their work in analysing CXR images, whose volume has increased over the years, according to NHG. It can quickly spot significant abnormalities indicative of heart and lung conditions in CXRs.

"We believe that using Lunit INSIGHT CXR as a triaging tool can help NHG’s family physicians manage their patients more efficiently, reducing wait times for discharge or referral to higher acuity facilities," said Tan Cher Heng, associate professor and chief research and innovation officer at NHG.

THE LARGER CONTEXT

Funded by the National Health Innovation Centre Singapore, the AI deployment will be done through Singapore's national radiology AI platform, AimSG (AI Medical Imaging Platform for Singapore’s Public Healthcare). 

The vendor-neutral platform, developed by Synapxe, NTT Data and SingHealth, aims to empower public hospitals and health facilities to take up validated AI imaging solutions to enhance their diagnostic capabilities and efficiency. 

AimSG initially assisted in integrating the same AI solution from Lunit into the radiology workflows of Singapore General Hospital and Changi General Hospital. 

In other related news, Lunit secured a deal with Samsung Electronics earlier this year to integrate its AI CXR solutions into the latter's premium line of X-rays. Besides supporting national cancer screening programmes worldwide, Lunit's AI solutions have seen increased adoption among military units across Asia-Pacific.