Making med tech more accessible with $1 scans

Over the past few years there has been significant development in medical technology incorporating automation and AI into the industry. More companies are developing intelligent solutions for the medical field with the goal of making the life of a doctor more efficient and effective, and to deliver better patient care. Although this advanced medical technology already exists, we’re not always seeing it in practice – or at least in widespread practice.

Some barriers holding these technologies from being mainstream medical solutions are in the complexity of integration, and most often due to high costs. However, there are companies out there that recognize this discrepancy, and are working hard to make their technology widespread and accessible to the masses.

Yesterday, it was announced that Zebra Medical Vision, is collaborating with Google Cloud to bring a transparent all-in-one model to Healthcare. Zebra-Med, a leading deep learning imaging analytics company, recently announced that its current and future radiology algorithms will now be enabled on the Google Cloud as part of its new offering to global health providers. As the amount of imaging storage grows – which it is expected to double in the next 5 years – health providers will be substantially challenged. They will need to keep track of their growing data storage and transform their whole IT infrastructure, leaving a perfect opportunity to incorporate the cloud system.

Demand for imaging services has grown significantly in the last 20 years, but the supply of qualified physicians has not been keeping up. Providers and radiologists are being forced to quantify their services, reducing the quality of care for the patients. Incorporating some of the new technologies out there will enhance the capabilities of radiologists and will improve the management and health of the patients. Medical technologies utilizing automated imaging analytics tools will contribute to clinical and computational horsepower so that radiologists are able to increase the quality of patient care.

Zebra is providing a fixed rate of $1 per scan – a drastic cost cut for medical technology. “We are making a commitment to provide our current tools, and all future ones, for a flat $1 USD per scan. By doing so we believe that a true difference can be made in the provision of radiology services worldwide.” says Elad Benjamin, Co-founder and CEO of Zebra Medical Vision. “With the help of Google Cloud, Zebra is significantly lowering the barriers that are keeping their technology from becoming widespread globally by creating a low cost technological solution.”

Both companies will be showcasing the integrated AI offering for health providers at the respective Google and Zebra booths at the coming Radiology Society of North America meeting (RSNA) in Chicago.

It will be interesting to see how sustainable this fixed rate is going to be in the long run. Many medical technologies will not be able to lower their prices, because the cost of production and development is far too high. But, if successful, Zebra-Med might transform the current medical technology business model, making intelligent medical technology more affordable and widespread. If more medical technology companies take it upon themselves to make their product accessible to the mainstream, medical technology could make the medical field a lot more effective.