Lung cancer is among the most common types of cancer and the leading cause of cancer deaths in the world, according to the American Lung Association. The current worldwide five-year survival rate is 20 percent, primarily because most patients are diagnosed after the disease has progressed to an advanced stage. However, the survival rate for small tumors treated at Stage 1A is up to 90 percent, a disparity that highlights a critical need for diagnosis and treatment at the earliest stage possible.

One of the best opportunities for early diagnosis of small, pre-symptomatic lung cancers is presented by the two million patients in the United States every year whose lung nodule is identified incidentally during chest CT scans ordered for other reasons, such as during an emergency department visit or cardiac event.

Today, patients at the Heart & Lung and Cancer Care Institutes at AtlantiCare Regional Medical Center are more likely to get that early diagnosis because Optellum's Virtual Nodule Clinic is assisting the Interventional Pulmonology team, led by Amit Borah, M.D. His team is focused on identifying and systematically following up on patients with incidentally detected lung nodules.

Optellum’s integrated Lung Cancer Prediction capability also helps AtlantiCare clinicians prioritize patients at high risk of having lung cancer. Since AtlantiCare began using the Patient Discovery search it has identified approximately 50 out of 300 patients who had lesions that need close surveillance.

“Our collaboration with AtlantiCare is noteworthy because we added a new healthcare system to our growing network, where we can work closely with the interventional pulmonology team to evaluate how combining the powers of the Optellum AI and robotic bronchoscopy platforms impacts health outcomes for patients, and take AI-driven early lung cancer interception to the next level,” said Václav Potěšil PhD, Optellum’s founder and chief business officer.

The Virtual Nodule Clinic pre-operative AI assessment helps inform clinical decisions for appropriate follow-up interventions using the MONARCH™ robotic bronchoscopy techniques, with the goal of achieving the earliest possible and least invasive treatment.

Thanks to this unique combination, Dr. Borah's team can find patients with the smallest and hardest to reach tumors and deploy the robotic bronchoscope to reach and biopsy the regions highlighted with the help of the Optellum AI.

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