Optellum is excited to be working with a leading hospital on the first clinical installation of Virtual Nodule Clinic (VNC). Over the past 8 months, Optellum’s Virtual Nodule Clinic (VNC) has supported clinicians and nurse practitioners at Wake Forest Baptist Health who manage and track patients with pulmonary nodules.

While the technology has been validated* by a group of pre-eminent research hospitals including Oxford University Hospitals, Vanderbilt University Medical Center and Heidelberg University Hospital, this is the first installation by clinical users working with Virtual Nodule Clinic on a day-to-day basis.

Wake Forest Baptist Health is a nationally recognized, fully integrated academic medical centre and health system serving populations across North Carolina and Virginia. The interventional pulmonary program offers leading edge technology and the lung cancer screening programme is a center of excellence. Each year, over 500 patients with pulmonary nodules are assessed for possible lung cancer. Among the first users of Virtual Nodule Clinic were Dr. Christina Bellinger and Dr. Travis Dotson.

For Dr. Dotson, a pulmonologist at Wake Forest Baptist’s Pulmonary, Critical Care, Allergy and Immunologic Diseases section, Virtual Nodule Clinic is a valuable addition to reporting and PACS software.

“VNC aggregates patients’ CT images and reports, allowing me to manage radiographical follow-up and log clinical decisions in a centralized system. VNC will issue an alert if a patient misses a CT scan so we can get them back on an optimal care pathway as soon as possible.”

Dr. Bellinger, Director of the Interventional Pulmonary Program at Wake Forest Baptist, is looking forward to using the software’s Lung Cancer Prediction tool, which recently obtained FDA clearance as a medical device.

“The exciting part of the software is the artificial intelligence based lung cancer prediction tool which will help me risk stratify the patient. This will likely help doctors intervene sooner and treat more cancers at an earlier stage.”

She presented the results from an enriched clinical study** to the American Thoracic Society (ATS) Conference 2020, showing how the Lung Cancer Prediction (LCP) tool helped all participating radiologists and pulmonologists improve their performance in categorising indeterminate pulmonary nodules as benign or malignant – improving both their sensitivity and specificity.

As further data is gathered on the clinical utility of Virtual Nodule Clinic and its Lung Cancer Prediction AI, Optellum looks forward to sharing more details of how AI-assisted diagnosis can help physicians make optimal decisions for patient care.

References

* Baldwin DR, et al External validation of a convolutional neural network artificial intelligence tool to predict malignancy in pulmonary nodules Thorax 2020;75:306-312, https://thorax.bmj.com/content/thoraxjnl/75/4/306.full.pdf
Massion P, et al Assessing the accuracy of a deep learning method to risk stratify indeterminate pulmonary nodules, American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine https://www.atsjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1164/rccm.201903-0505OC
** Bellinger C, Dotson TL et al, AI-based Computer-aided Diagnosis (CADx) improves Stratification Decision on Indeterminate Pulmonary Nodules: An MRMC Reader Study, American Thoracic Society International Conference 2020 https://www.atsjournals.org/doi/abs/10.1164/ajrccm-conference.2020.201.1_MeetingAbstracts.A7691