Google strikes deal with start-up to offer AI medical scanning to detect cancer via its cloud
The deal allows Google to compete with Microsoft and Amazon, and help Zebra Medical Vision scale its business
By Arjun Kharpal
Zebra Medical Vision, an artificial intelligence (AI) health start-up, has partnered with Google to offer its algorithms on the search giant’s cloud.
The Israeli firm has created AI algorithms to read medical scans and detect anything untoward before humans can. Currently, its software can spot issues such as liver and lung disease and it is working on capabilities to recognise breast cancer and lung cancer.
Zebra recently announced that all of its algorithms will be available to use for US$1 per scan. So, each time a hospital uses the algorithm to study a medical scan it will be charged US$1.
But currently, Zebra’s software is installed on-site, which can be costly for hospitals having to pay for servers to store the imaging. That’s why Zebra has partnered with Google to offer its algorithms as part of the Google Cloud.
Major hospitals and health care systems are slowly moving their data storage to the cloud, which offers a cheaper way to keep large amounts of information. Companies like Microsoft, Google and Amazon offer such services. But these technology giants also provide added services on top of their clouds, such as data analytics and AI capabilities.