CINCINNATI — Heart disease is the number one killer of women. There are several reasons for this — like fewer studies including women and the fact that symptoms women experience can look very different from those seen in men.
But a solution to this worldwide problem is being developed in Cincinnati, using Artificial Intelligence to make early detection more accessible to all.
AI is being used in nearly every industry, including healthcare.
"AI can make a big difference in medicine," said Kelly Cohen. "We are specifically talking about diagnostics, imaging."
Cohen is a professor at UC's College of Engineering and Applied Science and the co-founder of Cincinnati-based Genexia Health. He has been studying AI for decades and believes a routine mammogram can be used to detect and prevent coronary artery disease in women.
"In a mammogram, in addition to capturing information concerning cancer, we also capture breast arterial calcification, and we capture information that can correlate to cardiovascular disease risks," he said.
Cohen quite literally has a heart for the subject, having experienced his own health scare.
"Six years ago I had a heart attack," he said. "I was lucky there were symptoms. My wife called 911 and that saved my life. Not everybody is that lucky."
Cohen is now using that lived experience and his expertise to improve healthcare for women.
"[Women] do not show the symptoms that men do," he said. "But they do have mammograms more often than men. Now we have the opportunity because that evidence is there."
We met up with Cohen and his business partner, Genexia CEO Dino Martis at UC’s Venture Lab, where science intersects with business — entrepreneurs looking for the next big idea.
"The type of AI we're working on is called trustworthy AI," said Martis.
Martis said providing trustworthy AI to doctors is their goal as mistakes, especially in healthcare, can be dangerous. He said all AI is not created equal and that is why Genexia’s next steps include a clinical trial that will enroll 2,000 women — training their AI product on mammography scans.
"We need AI that is explainable so that the human, the clinician, the radiologist, oncologist, the cardiologist is able to look at the output and say, 'Okay, I might not necessarily agree with this output 100 percent so let me look at the reasoning. Let me look at how the AI arrived at this answer,'" said Martis.
Arriving at the right answer could also save billions of dollars since 40 million mammograms are performed in the U.S. every year.
They say getting an additional diagnostic health marker (basically getting two doctor visits rolled into one) would help women save both time and money.
"So [women] will get a diagnosis on their risk along with mammography at no cost," Martis said.
This will pick up on problems that are often overlooked or even mistaken for less serious issues like anxiety, allergies or stress over work.
They hope their company will level the playing field and believe in a future where the number one killer of women is a thing of the past.
"Today, 500-thousand women die of heart attacks," said Martis. "I would love to see in the future, we cut that number in half because of innovations such as ours. That would make the world a better place to live in."
After the clinical trial, Genexia will seek FDA approval for their technology for use in more than two dozen university hospitals. The product could be commercially available as early as 2027.
