On Friday, Pitt announced an expanded partnership with Reston-based Leidos Inc. that will expand the use of artificial intelligence in diagnosing and treating ailments including heart disease and cancer. The five-year collaboration between Leidos and Pitt's new Computational Pathology and AI Center of Excellence will also create AI-powered products that will generate revenue for Pitt and Leidos.
At least one of those products already is undergoing intellectual property review by Pitt's Office of Innovation and Entrepreneurship. The announcement of the deal happened as the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services has been cutting research funding for universities, including Pitt, Carnegie Mellon and Duquesne.
Although the use of digital pathology has been explored by start-up companies in the past, the technology will become the standard in the future, said Anantha Shekhar, senior vice chancellor for the health sciences at Pitt, as it's simply impossible for pathologists today to retain the rapidly expanding amount of knowledge in the field that may be necessary for any one diagnosis.
"Digital pathology will become the gold standard in diagnosis in the future," Dr. Shekhar said. "However intelligent you are, you can't retain this mass amount of knowledge at the time of diagnosis."
Leidos, a publicly traded company, has operated the National Cancer Institute's Frederick National Laboratory for Cancer Research for 25 years, and its relationship with Pitt stretches back nearly 20 years with 335 shared projects valued at $37 million. Pitt's CPACE center was formed about a year ago.
AI's potential in medicine includes earlier diagnosis of heart disease with an accuracy rate up to 90 percent, with a 50 percent improvement in survival rates, said Elizabeth Porter, president of Leidos' Health & Civil Sector. Use of the technology may especially benefit rural hospitals, which often don't have access to the latest technology.
Leidos has other university partnerships, including one inked in November with the University of Edinburgh in the United Kingdom. The partnership was intended to leverage the university's data science hub, which uses AI, to address challenges in national security, health care and other areas.
In 2008, Pitt's health system partner UPMC and GE Healthcare formed Omnyx LLC with a shared $40 million investment, with the goal of developing and commercializing advanced digital pathology imaging for such things as detecting breast cancer. From the start, the company faced technical challenges in managing huge digital files, but also faced regulatory uncertainty and variable global demand for its products.
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