Kakao Brain to unveil AI chest X-ray diagnosis service next year

Come next year, Kakao Brain, the artificial intelligence arm Kakao Corp., is slated to unveil an AI system that can write the first draft diagnosis of a chest radiograph, commonly referred to as a chest X-ray. 

The company claims the case will mark the first adoption of hyperscale AI in medical image analysis worldwide. 

Kakao Brain Vice President and Chief Healthcare Officer (CHO) Woong Bae said: “We will launch an AI-based medical diagnosis writing service in the early half of next year. The goal is to receive commercial licensing in South Korea and Europe in the first half of 2024.”

Since joining Kakao Brain last year, Bae has overseen its business and R&D in the healthcare sector. 

Before stepping into the Kakao conglomerate, Bae served as head of R&D of biosignal solutions at AI-based medical device company VUNO Inc., where he developed an array of AI-based diagnostic assistance solutions.

One of the most notable developments under his charge was the VUNO Med-Chest X-ray. 

Over in the United States, Alphabet Inc. is also busy growing its own medical image analysis company Isomorphic Labs. 

The drug discovery company was established in November 2021 under the umbrella of London-based AI lab DeepMind, a subsidiary of Alphabet Inc., Google's parent company.

Kakao plans to take on such global competitors by tapping into the expansive medical data owned by Korean medical institutions. 

NLP 

Kakao Brain has created a Minimum Viable Product (MVP), a version of a product with minimal features, using natural language processing (NLP). 

The advisory group consisting of medical professors viewed that the product improved the workflow and accuracy of X-ray diagnosis for doctors and was superior to existing AI services. 

While similar services can diagnose five to 10 diseases from a chest X-ray, Kakao’s upcoming service is thought to detect and decipher more than 120 types of lung-related diseases. 

“We plan to expand our services to mammography and abdominal ultrasonography,” Bae said.

Write to Ji-Hyun Lee at bluesky@hankyung.com
Jee Abbey Lee edited this article.