A.I. Is Finding Pancreatic Cancer Earlier in China

[ergophobe]

In China, A.I. Is Finding Deadly Tumors That Doctors Might Miss
A tool for spotting pancreatic cancer in routine CT scans has had promising results, one example of how China is racing to apply A.I. to medicine's tough problems.
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/02/world/asia/china-ai-cancer-pancreatic.html

The tool at Dr. Zhu's hospital, which was developed by researchers affiliated with the Chinese tech giant Alibaba, was trained to look for pancreatic cancer in noncontrast CTs.

The tool has since analyzed more than 180,000 abdominal or chest CTs, helping doctors detect about two dozen cases of pancreatic cancer, 14 of which were in the early stage... All of those patients had come to the hospital with complaints like bloating or nausea and had not initially seen a pancreatic specialist, Dr. Zhu said. Several of their CT scans had raised no alarms until they were flagged by the A.I. tool.

"I think you can 100 percent say A.I. saved their lives," he said.

[ergophobe]

RE the "death of mediocrity" with AI

But she acknowledged that it could be a valuable backstop for hospitals where specialists are in short supply. (PANDA is also being tested at a clinic in rural Yunnan Province.)

[rcjordan]

About a year ago I read that the best performances for interpreting radiology scans were by a 2-'person' team of human & AI. ...and AI quality has tripled or quadrupled since then.