Google Teams Up With Mayo Clinic To Explore AI Use In Delivering Radiotherapy

Alphabet Inc GOOGL GOOG subsidiary Google said Wednesday that it is collaborating with Mayo Clinic to develop an artificial intelligence tool that could help deliver radiation therapy to cancer patients.

What Happened: The tool will help reduce treatment planning time, which, in radiation therapy, can involve up to seven hours for a single patient, Google said in a statement. 

Mayo Clinic and Google Health will work to develop an algorithm that will help clinicians in contouring healthy tissues and organs from tumors, according to the Mountain View-based tech giant.

In the first phase of research with Mayo Clinic, the Sundar Pichai-led company hopes to develop and validate a model on how AI could be “deployed in practice.”

Why It Matters: There is a shortage of radiotherapy experts, which leads to long waiting times for cancer patients, noted Google. 

The tech giant hopes the planned research will lead to faster treatment planning and increase its accessibility for patients.

“The technology will not be used in a clinical setting and algorithms will be developed using only de-identified data,” according to Google.

In January, the company’s health unit said that its AI platform was able to detect breast cancer readings that were at first missed by doctors, according to the Wall Street Journal. The search engine giant had claimed that its technology could match or outperform radiologists.

Price Action: Alphabet Class A and Class C shares both closed almost 5.5% lower at $1,510.80 and $1,516.62, respectively, on Wednesday. Class A shares gained 0.74% in the after-hours session, while Class C shares rose 1.01%.