Apollo Hospitals, Bharti Airtel conduct first 5G/AI-guided colonoscopy trial

Apollo Hospitals and telecommunications company Bharti Airtel have started conducting the first 5G and AI-guided colonoscopy trial in India.

The procedure was done using AI on Airtel's 5G technology, which resulted in a "much faster" and more accurate detection of colon cancer. 

The trial also used Avesha's edge inferencing applications on the Amazon Web Services platform to process data in real time, enabling the faster delivery of analysis. 

Singapore's Health minister joins large-scale pop health study

A comprehensive population study on Asian-specific diseases has kicked off in Singapore.

The project called SG100K aims to identify social, environmental, lifestyle, and genetic factors associated with diseases prevalent in Singapore, such as diabetes, hypertension, and cancer.

Singapore's Minister for Health Ong Ye Kung is joining the project as one of the 100,000 consenting participants whose genomes will be sequenced and analysed. The participants will include people with Chinese, Malay, and Indian backgrounds, which represent about 80% of the overall population in Asia.

SG100K is led by the Lee Kong Chian School of Medicine at Nanyang Technological University, Singapore, in partnership with Singapore's Precision Health Research and genomics technology company Illumina.

South Korea awards first innovative medical device clearances 

The Ministries of Health and Welfare and Food and Drug Safety in South Korea have cleared the first three medical devices whose regulatory applications have been expedited under a new clearance system.

Two of the devices are digital therapeutics for treating insomnia by Welt and Aimmed and the other is an AI cerebral infarction diagnostic assistant software by JLK Bio.

At the end of October, the ministries formally designated devices based on AI/ML and digital wearable technologies as innovative medical devices, which are now qualified for an expedited clearance process. 

First APAC installation of NeuroLogica's next-gen mobile stroke unit in Thailand

NeuroLogica, a subsidiary of Samsung Electronics, has started expanding its mobile stroke unit with diagnostic CT imaging capabilities in the Asia-Pacific region with the first installation in Thailand.

The SmartMSU with OmniTom Elite has been installed at the Siriraj Stroke Center, Siriraj Hospital in Bangkok under the Mobile Stroke Unit-Stroke One Stop project.

Based on a press statement, the next-generation mobile stroke unit assists in the early detection of stroke by allowing paramedics to quickly assess whether a patient is having a stroke caused by a blood clot or haemorrhage.