Feb 16, 2022
  • Researchers have developed an AI-enabled diagnostic assistant called AI4leprosy that could help leprosy patients access treatment faster
  • An article published in The Lancet Regional Health – Americas shows the tool is over 90% accurate in detecting the disease
  • According to the authors, the publication provides proof of concept for the method, which now serves as the basis for developing a mobile application to accelerate leprosy detection

Basel, February 16, 2022 — An international team of scientists, led by Instituto Oswaldo Cruz (IOC/Fiocruz), Microsoft’s AI for Health team and the Novartis Foundation, has developed an AI-enabled diagnostic assistant that can help identify suspected leprosy lesions. The tool, called AI4leprosy, works by assessing skin lesion images in combination with patient symptoms.

An article published in The Lancet Regional Health – Americas this month shows that the diagnostic assistant is over 90% accurate in detecting leprosy. According to the authors, the publication provides proof of concept for the method, which now serves as the basis for developing a mobile application to further validate the tool, and ultimately accelerate leprosy detection globally.

"The results are an exciting indication of the potential of AI4leprosy. We are convinced that its further validation and global rollout can help cover the last miles toward leprosy elimination. We are using the newest technology available to end one of the oldest scourges known to man," said Ann Aerts, head of the Novartis Foundation.

The near elimination of leprosy is one of the greatest public health successes in history. Free availability of multidrug therapy (MDT) – donated by Novartis to all leprosy patients worldwide through the World Health Organization (WHO) – has been a game changer on the path to elimination, reducing the global burden of leprosy by 95% over the past decades. 

However, delays in diagnosing the disease allows leprosy to spread, and for the past ten years, the number of newly diagnosed patients has stagnated at about 200,000 per year. 

“Currently, leprosy diagnosis takes place in health facilities, often by non-specialized health professionals. Our goal is to produce an intuitive application where health professionals can take a skin lesion image and provide some clinical information, send it to the cloud and receive the probability of leprosy,” says Milton Ozório Moraes, head of the leprosy laboratory at Fiocruz.

The authors of the study published in Lancet Americas believe AI can contribute to interrupting transmission and to end this historical disease once and for all.

"Leprosy is one of humanity's oldest diseases, although it can be cured if detected early. By leveraging AI and machine learning, patients can get to the right experts at the right time, potentially improving the lives of millions of people around the world. The possibilities with this kind of application are endless, especially for multi-faceted diseases such as leprosy,” says Juan Lavista Ferres, Microsoft Chief Data Scientist.

In addition to Fiocruz, Microsoft’s AI for Health team, and the Novartis Foundation, the Universities of Basel, Switzerland, and Aberdeen, Scotland participated in the study. The study's images and databases are available for use by other scientists in open access.

About the Novartis Foundation 

The Novartis Foundation is a non-profit organization based in Switzerland. For over 40 years, we have helped improve the health of low-income populations, initially supporting disease elimination strategies in areas such as leprosy and malaria. Now, we help cities tackle the burning health issues of our time, cardiovascular disease and health inequity. Cardiovascular disease takes almost 18 million lives each year, and its emergence as a key risk factor for COVID-19 complications brings added urgency to addressing it at the population level. We take a population health approach, which means widening the lens from a narrow focus on healthcare delivery to a panoramic vision of improving health in the population at large, ensuring access to healthy lives for all. Our population health approach brings together disconnected data to create insights that help authorities understand the root causes of unequal health outcomes and find the best ways and best partners to remediate those. This empowers governments to re-engineer reactive care systems into human-centered health systems that keep people healthy.

www.novartisfoundation.org

The Novartis Foundation is on Twitter at @NovartisFDN

About Fiocruz

Promote health and social development, generate and disseminate scientific and technological knowledge, be an agent of citizenship. These are the concepts that guide the actions of the Oswaldo Cruz Foundation (Fiocruz), under the Ministry of Health, the most prominent institution of science and technology in health in Latin America.
https://portal.fiocruz.br/en

About Microsoft AI for Health

AI for Health is a $60 million, five-year philanthropic program from Microsoft, created to empower nonprofits, researchers, and organizations tackling some of the toughest challenges in global health. 
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/ai/ai-for-health 


Contact:

Carolyn Canham,
Novartis Corporate Affairs and Global Health Communications
Tel: +41 79 334 4325
Email: [email protected]