The Dubai Health Authority (DHA) announced today the preliminary results of the Chest X-ray AI Algorithm deployed across DHA medical fitness centres.

The collaboration is the first Augmented Intelligence (AI) validation in the United Arab Emirates (UAE).

The partners began reviewing the use of Artificial Intelligence enabled workflows in Radiology with Agfa HealthCare, more than two years ago.

Upon completion of phase one of onsite validation early January 2018, and on analysis of preliminary data, the algorithm was able to correctly identify diseases in Chest X-rays approximately 90% of the time and phase two results in March 2018 showed further improved sensitivity to 95 per cent.

Anonymized Chest X-ray samples were provided by DHA to Agfa HealthCare. As part of this joint collaborative effort, Agfa HealthCare in partnership with VRVis Vienna, began developing Machine Learning enabled detection of abnormal Chest X-ray finding.

The Algorithm processed approximately 4,900 Chest X-rays, and two DHA MFC Radiologists reviewed the findings detected by the AI Algorithm.

The two Radiologists provided feedback via an AI enabled workflow if they agreed or disagreed with the AI algorithm findings.

His Excellency Humaid Al Qutami, Chairman of the Board and Director-General of the Dubai Health Authority, said: “In line with the vision of our leaders and in line with the Dubai Health Strategy 2016 -2021 we are keen to foster the use of technology in the health sector to improve efficiencies, enhance healthcare management and overall workflows and most importantly to further improve patient-centric care. Utilization of AI in the health sector is also in line with the UAE Strategy for Artificial Intelligence. The DHA decided to use AI for x-ray imaging across medical fitness centres because of the scale of the service and the fact that it will greatly enhance work efficiencies and will lead to optimum utilization of manpower. The move will have a significant positive impact on the overall medical fitness system.”

The total number of people who visited the DHA run medical fitness centres during 2017 for new and renewal visas were 2,126,066. Medical fitness test is a mandatory requirement for all expats in the UAE. It is required for a residency, employment or education visa.

DHA has 20 medical fitness centres across the emirate for issuance and renewal of visas. DHA will implement this technology across select medical fitness centres to further access the feasibility prior to expanding this technology across all its medical fitness centres.

Dr Mohammed Al Redha, Director of Transformational Office at the DHA, said:
“The results are very promising. We will work together to establish an enterprise imaging strategy for the DHA to enable multi-speciality medical imaging consolidation. DHA will establish a framework of Artificial Intelligence workflow to augment radiology imaging, including in the area of detecting diseases and we will collaborate to validate machine-learning algorithms in development.”

Maisa Al Bustani, Director of Medical Fitness at the DHA said that based on the preliminary results and with task-based rules automation capabilities of Agfa HealthCare’s Enterprise Imaging solution, DHA is working on establishing a differentiated approach on AI by identifying KPIs; and perceives the following benefits:

• Workflow automation for Radiologists – Ability to focus on suspected Chest X-rays faster instead of manual searching

• Automated report templates

• Improved turn-around times – Expand the scope of Chest X-ray screening program to add more volume and capacity

• Improved patient satisfaction by providing fast results and reports

She added that the move will benefit a vast number of individuals on a day-to-day basis and revolutionalize the way in which radiology imaging is carried out.

Dr. Anjum M. Ahmed, Global Director Imaging Information Systems at Agfa HealthCare reiterates, “Dubai Health Authority is demonstrating leadership and vision on the road towards its strategic goals for 2016-2021. We are excited about this opportunity, as this is the first AI validation project in the region, and this will help set a model for others to follow, and explore the use of AI applications to enable fast detection of chronic and critical diseases, help improve clinical productivity and enable care providers better serve their communities.”

The validation is currently in progress at one of the DHA run MFCs in Dubai

Agfa Healthcare and DHA will continue the validation process to further improve the accuracy of AI Algorithm detection

Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning are fueling innovations in healthcare to address the pressing clinical needs of care providers. Growing populations, chronic disease prevalence, co-morbidities and spiraling healthcare costs have generated the demand for augmented intelligence leveraging the power of AI and Machine Learning Algorithms, to help improve clinical decision-making, clinician productivity and care.