PaiYiPai and U.S.-based Enlitic Announce Strategic Partnership to Pilot Real-World AI Applications in Medical Imaging

Recently, Chinese medical AI technology company MEDP.AI officially established the “MEDP.AI Medical Intelligence Research Institute” and entered into a deep collaboration with Enlitic, a top-tier U.S. AI company, to pilot real-world applications of artificial intelligence in medical imaging.

VCBeat (WeChat ID: vcbeat) has learned through research that Enlitic is a technology company based in San Francisco, California, USA. It was ranked 35th (2015) and 14th (2016) for two consecutive years among the world’s top artificial intelligence companies by MIT Technology Review. The company is dedicated to leveraging cutting-edge technologies such as artificial intelligence and machine learning to assist in medical diagnosis. By employing state-of-the-art deep learning algorithms to mine vast amounts of healthcare data—including medical images, diagnostic reports, and clinical trial data—Enlitic has achieved rapid, accurate, and practical health diagnostics.

Following the establishment of the partnership, Mr. Wu Shizhan, Founder of MEDP.AI, stated, “The establishment of the MEDP.AI Medical Intelligence Research Institute has provided greater impetus for companies at the forefront of technology to conduct more refined scientific research and prepare for market commercialization. AI-supported diagnostic solutions will significantly enhance medical efficiency while enabling rich content discovery, such as early detection treatment plans and disease monitoring.”

According to VCBeat, in order to enhance the industry-wide capability for acquiring and analyzing medical data, and to provide robust support throughout the entire process of medical diagnosis and treatment, MEDP.AI previously established the Da Vinci Medical Intelligence Research Project. This initiative aimed to achieve deep intelligent application capabilities in the medical field by leveraging cutting-edge technologies such as artificial intelligence, big data, deep learning, and machine vision. Upon securing stable intelligent application capabilities, MEDP.AI formally established the Medical Intelligence Research Institute.

The Institute focuses its intelligent research on medical imaging primarily on the acquisition and analysis of data from CT, MRI, PET, pathological slides, fundus photographs, ultrasound, and other medical imaging modalities.

Taking X-rays as an example, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) estimates that approximately 12.1 million people in the United States undergo mammography annually. However, according to statistics from the American Cancer Society (ACS), nearly half of these cases are suspected "false positives," meaning that half of healthy women are informed they have cancer. A large number of women opt for breast biopsies to confirm the diagnosis (approximately 1.6 million per year), among whom 20% are healthy individuals. Meanwhile, the accuracy rate of biopsy results is only 60%-80%.

The resolution of X-ray images is typically in the megapixel range, whereas malignant tumors occupy only tens of pixels. In terms of relative proportion, distinguishing malignant tumors presents considerable difficulty. For traditional computer-aided diagnosis (CAD) systems, although they can detect spots in the images, they frequently yield false-positive results.

The MEDP.AI Medical Imaging AI System integrates state-of-the-art deep learning algorithms. With the assistance of physicians, it analyzes extensive medical imaging datasets to automatically summarize “morphological features” characteristic of malignant tumors and establish “recognition patterns” for determining the presence or absence of malignancy.

When the AI system applies its summarized recognition patterns to medical imaging, it can determine the presence of malignant tumors with greater accuracy and speed than traditional methods. Furthermore, research results indicate that the AI system can intuitively translate X-ray images into diagnostic information, facilitating rapid clinical assessment by physicians.

China faces an urgent demand for radiologist services. The annual growth rates of radiologists in the United States and China are merely 2.2% and 4.1%, respectively, far lagging behind the rapid growth rates of medical imaging data, which stand at 63.1% and 30.0%. The substantial scale of the health checkup market, with 300 million participants annually, further underscores this issue. The in-depth application of artificial intelligence technology in the field of medical imaging is bridging these gaps and unleashing significant market potential.

This transnational strategic partnership between the two parties was achieved through the joint efforts of Ciming Health Checkup, a renowned and authoritative health screening institution, and Capitol Health Limited (ASX: CAJ), an Australian company. Prior to this, both sides had successfully conducted extensive technical testing, securing first-mover advantages and establishing a foundation for collaboration in specific fields.

At the signing ceremony of the strategic agreement between MEDP.AI and Enlitic, Dr. Han Xiaohong from Ciming Health Checkup stated that China’s healthcare industry—including hospitals, pathology centers, health checkup centers, and third-party imaging centers—is poised for a period of rapid growth. Given China’s vast healthcare market and ever-growing medical demands, high expectations are placed on the collaboration between these two leading AI companies from China and the United States.