Siemens Healthineers and ScreenPoint Medical have agreed to partner to develop artificial intelligence based applications for breast imaging. This collaborative arrangement also includes the acquisition of a strategic minority stake in ScreenPoint Medical by Siemens Healthineers.
The partnership intends to leverage the superior expertise of Siemens Healthineers in breast imaging as well as that of ScreenPoint Medical in mammography decision support to develop innovative clinical applications for breast cancer screening and diagnosis. Professor Nico Karssemeijer, CEO of ScreenPoint Medical, explains, "together with Siemens Healthineers, we can bring our expertise in AI into the entire screening and diagnostic pathway, starting from risk stratification to image acquisition and diagnosis."
"The aim of our collaboration with ScreenPoint Medical is to expand precision medicine by providing automated clinical decision support that makes it easier and faster to distinguish between healthy and tumor tissue, thus increasing diagnostic accuracy," adds Dr. Peter Schardt, head of X-ray Products at Siemens Healthineers. "Working with strong partners such as ScreenPoint will help us drive personalized breast care pathways with new applications based on deep learning and artificial intelligence."
Both companies pool their individual strengths in their strategic partnership. ScreenPoint Medical's current, highly innovative mammography reading software, Transpara, is available for a variety of mammography systems. It enables clinical decisions support and computer aided detection for higher reading accuracy. It has been proven to help radiologists better detect breast cancer with mammography and reduce variations between different users - both aspects integral in expanding precision medicine. Transpara is cleared for clinical use for CE-countries with the digital mammography and reading portfolio of Siemens Healthineers. In the coming months, ScreenPoint plans to attain regulatory approvals for the Transpara solution in further clinical applications and countries.
Siemens Healthineers has a long standing history of innovations in breast imaging and a comprehensive portfolio of systems across ultrasound, mammography and MRI as well as the accompanying reading solutions. The latest addition in mammography, Mammomat Revelation, offers the highest depth resolution on the market with a unique 50-degree wide angle for tomosynthesis. Automated and precise breast density measurements allow for instant risk stratification. On the reading side, Syngo.BreastCare offers advanced visualization for 2D and 3D mammography with automatic workflows and Artificial Intelligence (AI) based tomosynthesis reading.
About Siemens Healthineers
Siemens Healthineers enables healthcare providers worldwide to increase value by empowering them on their journey towards expanding precision medicine, transforming care delivery, improving patient experience and digitalizing healthcare. A leader in medical technology, Siemens Healthineers is constantly innovating its portfolio of products and services in its core areas of diagnostic and therapeutic imaging and in laboratory diagnostics and molecular medicine. Siemens Healthineers is also actively developing its digital health services and enterprise services.In fiscal 2017, which ended on September 30, 2017, Siemens Healthineers generated revenue of €13.8 billion and profit of €2.5 billion and has about 48,000 employees worldwide.
About ScreenPoint Medical
ScreenPoint Medical was founded in 2014 as a spin-off from Radboud University Medical Center in Nijmegen, The Netherlands, to develop and bring to the market innovative machine learning solutions to improve breast cancer screening and diagnosis. With a strong and experienced team of scientists, ScreenPoint developed the AI system Transpara, which matches the performance of experienced radiologists in detecting breast cancer in screening mammograms. ScreenPoint now focuses on expanding its technology and creating integrated solutions to enable radiologists to achieve the highest quality in an environment that is increasingly demanding.