Danish Treatment Council does not recommend AI for decision support
The Danish Treatment Council has published its first two recommendations, and the council does not recommend AI for decision support for colonoscopy when diagnosing neoplastic disease.
One of the reasons for the decision is that the national guidelines prescribe that all identified polyps must be removed, and the AI finds even the smallest and unimportant polyps. The council recommends that the guidelines are updated because they are a barrier to utilising new technology.
However, the decision is highly relevant for CAI-X and in particular the project AICE, which aims to create a complete and validated AI-assisted pathway to improve colon capsule endoscopy.
Project Manager Eskil Manley Welan explains: “When we work on developing AI in the Horizon Europe-funded project AICE to be used in colon capsule endoscopy, we don’t focus on just one algorithm trained to find polyps. We also train algorithms to, among other things, estimate size and pathology of the polyps and to segment them.
As the Danish Treatment Council rightfully reasons when not recommending current state AI in colonoscopy, just focusing on finding polyps can lead to a lot of unnecessary treatments, as Danish national guidelines prescribe the removal of all found polyps. But by looking at factors beyond location and size, the clinical guidelines developed in AICE will hopefully show how AI can lead to better – not just more – treatment, inspiring a safe update of national guidelines to the benefit of patients.”
Read the press release from the Danish Treatment Council here (in Danish only).