Bowel cancer affects 2 million people every year, and is one of the deadliest forms of cancer. Bowel cancer is also extremely expensive to treat. Norwegian Augere Medical has recently received MDR CE approval for their AI technology which helps surgeons and gastroenterologists to identify polyps in the intestine in a far more precise way than has previously been possible.
With today’s technology, it is expected that 1.6 million people will die of bowel cancer globally in 2040. Developing better methods for diagnostics is therefore crucially important. Now Norwegian Augere Medical has been approved for a tool that uses artificial intelligence to identify polyps in the early stages of cancer in a much more precise way.
We meet acting CEO, David Borge Larsen and his team in the office premises along Akerselva in Oslo. The premises previously housed one of Norway’s first unicorns, Oda. Now the food boxes have been replaced with hard drives and a video algorithm that can identify cancer in the intestine.
From football to bowel cancer
The story of Augere Medical started back in 2014, four years before the company was formally established. The world-leading AI researcher Prof. Michael Riegler had started Forzasys, which was a spinoff from the research laboratory Simula Metropolitan Center for Digital Engineering in Oslo. Riegler had developed an algorithm to analyze real-time football video. Riegler got in touch with Dr. Thomas de Lange, who had researched bowel cancer, to look at a possible new area of application for this technology – namely the identification of polyps in the bowel.
– Until then, the identification of polyps had been done via a camera that is inserted into the intestine, where the surgeon via a screen manually identifies polyps that may be cancer or the pre-stage of cancer, explains Borge Larsen.
Make more skilled surgeons
The problem is that people make mistakes, and not all surgeons are equally skilled at identifying such polyps. Using artificial intelligence and pattern recognition, Augere Medical’s technology can identify polyps in the early stages of cancer.
– The problem today is that there is a wide range in competence and training among gastroenterologists in different hospitals. The most skilled specialists detect cancerous polyps in 40 percent of examinations, while those with the least training find polyps in 10 percent of examinations, says Borge Larsen.
By using PolypAID, all gastroenterologists, regardless of competence and training, can get help to detect more polyps in one examination. When the specialist looks in the intestine with a camera, markings appear in the form of green squares that say something about the fact that these may be polyps that need to be removed.
Borge Larsen compares their innovation to using a reversing camera on a car.
– With a reversing camera you become a better driver. The chance of you colliding is far less than if you had not had a reversing camera. In the same way, PolypAID helps you take better decisions.. By using PolypAID as support, we can reduce the percentage of errors performed by the gastroenterologists, says Borge Larsen.
Long approval process
The path to an approved solution has been long for Augere Medical. In order to get a medical-technical solution approved, a company must obtain a conformity assessment from a technical control body – a so-called notified body. Augere Medical had to leave Norway and go to the Netherlands to find an organization that had expertise in their area of therapy and technology.
– In total, we have authored more than 930 documents to get to where we are today, says Borge Larsen.
Now PolpyAID has just come into operation at Sahlgrenska in Gothenburg and Ullevål Hospital in Oslo.
– We are first entering the Scandinavian market. The plan is a European launch in 2025 and then a further launch in the rest of the world, says Borge Larsen.
Augere Medical is participating at DNB NXT Healthcare in Forskningsparken on October 24th.