Time Medical Invited to Speak in CIBR Annual Conference

15th May 2023 – Time Medical was invited to attend the 2023 Annual Conference of the Coalition for Imaging & Bioengineering Research (CIBR), held at Hall of the States in Washington, D.C.  Representatives from over ten government agencies and social NGO groups, including the National Institutes of Health (NIH), dozens of universities and hospitals, and more than ten medical tech companies were present.  There were three themed roundtable sessions held for “mobile cancer imaging service”, “artificial intelligence (AI) regulations” and “new medical device registration”.

Prof. Q.Y. Ma, CEO of Time Medical (TM) was invited to speak on “mobile cancer imaging service” and also co-chaired the session on mobile cancer diagnosis with Dr. Chris Eusemann, R&D vice president of Siemens Healthineers. Prof. Ma's speech focused on mobile medical community screening service and he also introduced the mobile digital radiography (DR) vehicle screening service launched by TM during the epidemic, to conduct lung examinations on returning students when school re-opened.  Aided with AI, each vehicle could screen & test 1,000 students per day, amongst which, more than 20 out of 5,000 students were diagnosed with tuberculosis and other diseases. Post-epidemic, TM continued to use mobile DR to perform lung screening in communities and remote areas. In Hainan for example, 25,000 residents were screened for lung diseases, and 0.5% of them were detected with lung cancer and tuberculosis. TM’s mobile DR+AI capability became an effective method for lung disease screening in the community.

Prof. Ma also spoke about TM cooperating with Harvard School of Public Health to launch breast cancer magnetic resonance (MR) screening community service projects, using mobile MR diagnosis services developed by TM as a fast and accurate dedicated breast MRI.  Statistic shows in 2022, over 280,000 women in the US were diagnosed with breast cancer, bringing the number of breast cancer patients in US to more than 4 million.  While there are 8,600 mammography centers in the US able to screen 80% (50 million) women over the age of 40 each year, but X-ray-based mammography has relatively low precision and risk of radiation.  More accurate and safer breast cancer screening diagnostic is MRI, but that is more expensive.  TM uses technological innovation and AI to greatly shorten the time taken for breast MRI screening (improving patient throughput), hence could reduce the price of screening down to mammography level of about $100-200 US dollars. Prof. Ma presented the opportunity to the conference communities to cooperate and jointly promote the mobile breast MR screening service to benefit more patients globally.

Prof. Ma's speech aroused interest and active discussions among the participants. Representatives of American Breast Cancer Imaging Society, UC San Diego Medical Center, Anderson Cancer Center, University of Michigan Medical Center, Medical Imaging Data Center, as well as other breast imaging experts expressed their support for this project and keen intention to collaborate.

Prof Ma spoke at the special session on mobile diagnosis of cancer

Prof. Judy Gichoya deliver her speech at the AI medical session

Dr. Qi Duan, Program Director of Health Informatics Division of National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering and Prof. Judy Gichoya, Emory University School of Medicine chaired the AI session.  Prof Gichoya, a strong promotor of AI in healthcare, indicated that the new AI tech such as ChatGPT will inevitably impact our society and healthcare.  Large scale Chat GPT will change the digital healthcare, particularly in medical education and community diagnosis service.

At this meeting, Michael Harsh (TM’s Senior Advisor), Julie Chow (TM’s MD for Global Imaging) and Prof Ma discussed potential collaborations with the representatives of National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering (NIBIB), Food and Drug Administration (FDA), National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health (APRA-H), American College of Radiology, Society for Breast Imaging (SBI), Society for Interventional Radiology (SIR), American Academy of Physical Medicine (AAPM), Society for Nuclear Medicine and Molecular Imaging (SNMMI), Brain Aneurysm Foundation, Focused Ultrasound Foundation, Medical Imaging Data Center (MIDRC), and National Health Center Heart Lung and Blood Institute (NHLBI) and other institutions.

Alongside, the 2023 Medical Imaging Technology Showcase was held by CIBR at Rayburn House of Capitol Hill.  Twenty-nine young professors and doctors from first-class universities and hospitals demonstrated the latest research achievements in the fields of cancer imaging, AI, CT, MRI, PET and interventional radiology.  Prof Ma, Michael Harsh and Julie Chow from Time Medical participated in the tech show to discuss in-depth with the AI and breast MR researchers from Harvard Medical School, MSKCC, and UC San Francisco Medical Center. 

The event ended with the Chairman of Brain Aneurysm Foundation, Tom Tinlin sharing his personal story. Tom was a longtime commissioner of Boston Transportation Department and is an aneurysm patient himself. He declared in front of 200 participates in the Rayburn House that “innovative tech of imaging and intervention saved my life” and thanked all the people in the imaging profession for their contribution to the advancement of medical imaging and healthcare service.

Prof Ma, Michael Harsh and Renée L. Cruea (CIBR Executive Director)

PROF MA, TOM TINLIN (BRAIN ANEURYSM FOUNDATION, CHAIRMAN) and CHristine Buckley (Brain ANEurysm Foundation, Executive Director & Board President)

Tom Tinlin, longtime Boston Transit Commissioner gave keynote speech in the Med Tech Show