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African hospitals are using AI and big data to diagnose cancer

Swiss firm Sophia Genetics does some incredibly interesting work that combines data with medicine.

One of its products, SOPHiA is an artificial intelligence that analyses swathes of genetic data in a bid to help diagnose patients with cancer and congenital disorders.

The reason we’re telling you this is because today Sophia Genetics revealed a number of hospitals throughout Africa which are using SOPHiA to identify mutations in a patient’s genomic profile that may cause disease.

The hospitals are:

  • PharmaProcess in Casablanca, Morocco
  • ImmCell in Rabat, Morocco
  • The Al Azhar Oncology Center in Rabat, Morocco
  • The Riad Biology Center in Rabat, Morocco
  • The Oudayas, Medical Analysis Laboratory, Morocco
  • The Center for Proteomic & Genomic Research (CPGR) in Cape Town, South Africa
  • The Bonassama District Hospital in Douala, Cameroon

These seven hospitals join a network of 260 around the world and will contribute to expanding SOPHiA’s knowledge base and should help to make diagnosing diseases much faster.

“By joining our community, African hospitals are breaking down the technological barriers that prevented African patients from benefiting from the same level of genomic testing than patients from the best medical centers worldwide. This is a story about accessibility, democratization, empowerment, and hope,” Sophia Genetics co-founder Jurgi Camblong said in a statement.

Lack of diagnostics means that 60% of women in Africa with breast cancer die every year compared to 20% of women with the disease in the US and EU. Early diagnosis of breast cancer can increase life expectancy by 30% according to the the International Prevention Research Institute and that’s where Sophia Genetics comes in.

SOPHiA breaks across borders and can give hospitals access to genomic information they might not have otherwise had access to, and that’s not just here in Africa, its global.

It’s a very cool system that uses some of the most forward thinking technology available to humanity at the moment and we applaud all the hospitals using this tech to help diagnose diseases that kill millions each year.

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