GE HealthCare on Monday announced a new artificial intelligence application it said will save time for doctors who diagnose and treat cancer. CareIntellect for Oncology, as the tool is called, will help oncologists get up to speed on a patient’s history and disease progression by quickly showing them the data they need, the company said. GE HealthCare wants to spare oncologists the headache of digging through records so they can focus on caring for their patients, the company said. Health-care data is notoriously difficult to analyze, and as much as 97% of the data produced by hospitals goes unused, according to a Deloitte report. That information is stored across numerous vendors and file formats such as images, lab test results, clinical notes and device readings, which can be extremely taxing for doctors to sort through. “It’s very time-consuming, very frustrating for these clinicians,” Dr. Taha Kass-Hout, GE HealthCare’s global chief science and technology officer, told CNBC in an interview. CareIntellect for Oncology will be able to summarize clinical reports and identify when patients are deviating from their treatment plans, Kass-Hout said. The system can flag when a patient misses a lab test, for instance, so that their doctor can determine the best next steps. “For cancer patients, the treatment journey can last years and involve numerous doctor visits,” he said. CareIntellect for Oncology can also help identify relevant clinical trials that patients might be eligible for, saving oncologists hours of work, said Chelsea Vane, vice president of digital products at GE HealthCare. That process has traditionally required doctors to scroll through a database of available trials, memorize inclusion and exclusion criteria and dig through patient records to determine a good fit, Vane told CNBC.

Full story : GE HealthCare announced a new artificial intelligence application it said will save time for doctors who diagnose and treat cancer.