Baystate Health’s Innovation Arm, Life Image Partner on AI Initiative for Cancer Research & Treatment

– Baystate Health selects Life Image to leverage artificial intelligence (AI) to advance cancer research and increase treatment access.

– Life Image will work with Baystate’s innovation arm, TechSpring, to develop and evaluate AI solutions to improve treatment decisions and clinical trial matching for cancer patients.

Baystate Health, a Boston-based integrated health system serving more than 800,000 patients in western New England, today announced a strategic partnership with Life Image, the largest medical evidence network providing access to points of care and curated clinical and imaging data, to develop novel AI tools that would help advance technical innovations in radiology, neurology and oncology.

Life Image to Work with Baystate’s Innovation Arm on AI Solutions

Specifically, TechSpring, the innovation arm for Baystate, will work closely with Life Image to evaluate a number of AI solutions including those that promise to improve speed and accuracy in diagnosing blood clots in stroke patients; improve clinical pathways for physicians treating or diagnosing a patient by finding and comparing clinical criteria against a group of de-identified patients with similar clinical characteristics; and identify potential patient matches to oncology clinical trials in order to advance cancer research as well as give western New England residents better access to potentially life-saving treatments.

In this new iteration of a decade-long partnership between these two Boston-based healthcare organizations, Baystate and Life Image will: 

– Target use cases with high clinical utility in radiology, neurology, and oncology

– Improve how physicians treat and diagnose patients by pinpointing and comparing clinical trial criteria against de-identified patient groups with similar clinical characteristics

– Identify potential patient matches to oncology clinical trials

Baystate launched TechSpring five years ago to accelerate innovation in healthcare informatics and technology in order to solve the challenges of healthcare. TechSpring provides technology companies access to a real, live health system using a proven process and platform to test and validate digital health solutions. 

Impact of Partnership

“Baystate Health and TechSpring are excited to partner with Life Image on the next generation of healthcare technology with AI initiatives that have targeted use cases with high clinical utility and value,” said Richard Hicks, MD, Department Chair of Radiology at Baystate. “For example, by understanding how similar patients may have been diagnosed or treated can help improve accuracy and, ultimately, patient outcomes.”