Adaptation of Mia® (Mammography Intelligence Assessment) to support breast screening programmes to address Covid-19-related breast screening backlog

Due to the Covid-19 outbreak, multiple routine NHS services are on pause, including breast screening programmes. An estimated 3-9 month delay in women being screened will lead to more cancers being missed at the stage where they are easier to treat and immense pressure on an already overburdened system.

Our breast cancer screening AI solution Mia (Mammography intelligent assessment) can help solve this impending crisis by automating some aspects of the breast screening programme whilst maintaining current screening performance standards.

We have developed a phased approach aligned with the way the human breast radiology readers are brought into the breast screening service and this requires a thorough validation. With breast radiologists, we will validate and test Mia in the pre-commercial period and build trust in the AI.

With our NHS partners, we will develop the prospective clinical evidence required for the accelerated adoption of Mia in time to tackle the impending crisis. The output of the project will be an AI solution that can be fast-tracked to reduce the backlogs caused by Covid-19 and give every woman in the UK a better fighting chance against breast cancer.