Teens Developed App That Identifies Mouth Cancer–Making Early Diagnosis Easy and Winning $50k for Their School
GNN has reported on multiple occasions how artificial intelligence is being leveraged to detect signs of cancer.
Now, a team of high schoolers is using AI to help their community combat one of the deadlier forms: oral cancer.
Using a photo taken on a smartphone, the Oral Scan app detects signs of oral cancer at an 82% success rate. If the AI thinks it’s found evidence of a tumor, it can diagnose the stage with an even better, 87% success rate.
Not bad for a bunch of teenagers, and even though 82% is below what most medical ethicists believe should be the threshold for outsourcing tumor identification to a machine, it’s far better than the rate of 0%, which is what many in the team’s home state of Arkansas will experience.
52,000 Americans are diagnosed with oral cancer every year, and more than 12,000 died as a result, according to their research. Early detection of oral cancers can boost survival rates by 40%, but such cancers are detected early in only 30% of cases.
In dental deserts, these numbers are even worse. In Arkansas for example, 90% of the population didn’t visit a dentist last year, and according to one dental surgeon the team spoke with, whole counties in Arkansas don’t even have a dentist to visit.
“We learned that current diagnosis methods are expensive, intrusive, and often inaccurate, making early detection rare,” Veera Unnam, one of the team members, from Bentonville West High School.
Their response is Oral Scan, a free app in which each diagnosis will cost just 50 cents, and deliver a response in just 15 seconds.
The team designed the app to be usable in all countries on both Apple and Android IOS, and ensured it was easy and intuitive to use, showing their commitment not only to Arkansas, but the world at large.
AI FINDING CANCER:
Recently, Unnam and his two colleagues entered Oral Scan into the 15th annual Samsung Solve for Tomorrow competition, empowering public school students (grades 6-12) to drive positive change in their communities by applying STEM know-how to address real-world, pressing issues.
Each finalist school receives $50,000 in Samsung technology and supplies and will compete at the live Solve for Tomorrow Pitch Event in Washington, DC, on April 28th. Three National Winners will each earn $100,000 in prizes, and one will be named the Community Choice Winner.
Celebrating the 15th year of Solve For Tomorrow, Samsung has awarded more than $27 million in resources to nearly 4,000 public schools across the US to date, and the Oral Scan team will be hoping they’re among the recent winners. However, in advance of the announcement of the winner, Oral Scan is already getting national news headlines, and the team have been invited to speak at medical conferences to present their invention.
WATCH the students’ video pitch below…
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