Oxford, UK and Houston, TX – December 17, 2025 – Optellum, a global leader in AI-enabled clinical decision support for early lung cancer diagnosis, today announced new clinical evidence demonstrating the impact of its Virtual Nodule Clinic (VNC) with Lung Cancer Prediction (LCP) AI. The latest findings published in BMJ Open Respiratory Research and presented at the ESMO AI & Digital Oncology Congress, highlight how Optellum’s platform can significantly accelerate time to diagnosis and improve follow-up rates for people with lung cancer.

The newly published retrospective study evaluated the use of combined AI-based patient identification and risk stratification, supported by patient tracking tools within a US academic medical center. The analysis compared existing standard practice with a modelled AI-enabled workflow.

Key findings:

• Guideline-concordant follow-up for detected nodules increased from 34% to 94% in an AI-enabled workflow.
• Median time to diagnosis of non-small cell lung cancer was reduced from 129 days to 25 days.
• Integration of AI tools demonstrated clear utility to improve patient follow-up rates for incidentally detected lung nodules and to expedite diagnosis of lung cancer, and may support earlier, potentially curative intervention.

These results provide strong evidence that AI-enabled pathways, combining patient discovery from radiology reports and AI risk stratification (computer-aided diagnosis, CADx), can address long-standing challenges in managing patients with incidentally detected lung nodules, many of whom are either lost to follow up or do not receive follow-up according to clinical guidelines.

Building on the positive retrospective results, Optellum has undertaken a US multi-center ambispective study evaluating real-world implementation of Virtual Nodule Clinic with LCP at 14 sites. At the inaugural ESMO AI & Digital Oncology Congress, a poster summarized interim results from natural language processing-based analysis of over 295,000 radiology reports.

Interim results from three participating health systems over a total of 38 paired months show substantial improvements in patient identification and follow-up after the integration of VNC with LCP at participating sites:

• Lung Nodules: Patients with lung nodules for whom clinicians recommended follow up increased from 136 -> 477, substantially expanding the pool of individuals recognised as needing follow-up.
• Lung Masses: Patients with lung masses for whom clinicians recommended follow up increased 46->106, capturing more high-risk findings.
• Follow-up: 2-3x more patients with nodules were invited for follow-up (136->378), and with masses were invited for follow-up (46->94)

These results suggest that AI provided clinicians with the information needed to identify and to start more patients on appropriate clinical pathways, ensuring findings that might otherwise have been missed or delayed were acted upon. Additional data from the study will be shared on the impact of AI on cancer diagnoses, pending completion of patient follow-up.

“Lung cancer remains the leading cause of cancer death, and early diagnosis is the most important factor in improving survival. Recent advances in treatments have transformed care but these work best when cancer is found early. We need innovation over the entire pathway to ensure that the 1.5 million new incidental pulmonary nodule patients in the US each year get the right follow-up. These studies show that AI tools can close this gap at scale, so more patients are diagnosed earlier when cure is possible.” – David Carbone, MD, PhD, Professor of Internal Medicine, Director of the James Thoracic Oncology Center at The Ohio State University Comprehensive Cancer Center.

“Our mission is to help clinicians find and diagnose lung cancer earlier, when patients have the best chance at curative treatment,” said Dr. Johnathan Watkins, Chief Executive Officer, Optellum. “The new BMJ publication and ESMO AI poster both indicate that Virtual Nodule Clinic consistently improves identification, follow-up, and time to diagnosis. These are essential steps in enabling a stage-shift in lung cancer care across a diversity of health systems.”

The studies were supported by Bristol Myers Squibb as part of a collaboration announced in April 2025, with both organizations committed to working together to advance earlier lung cancer detection for patients.

• Read the full BMJ paper here.
• Read the ESMO AI poster here.
• Learn more about Optellum’s collaboration with Bristol Myers Squibb.

About Optellum
Optellum is a commercial-stage lung health company providing artificial intelligence decision-support software that assists physicians in the early diagnosis of their patients. The company was founded so that every lung disease patient is diagnosed and optimally treated at the earliest possible stage when the probability of better health outcomes is highest.

The Oxford- and Houston-based MedTech company is the first and only to achieve FDA 510(k) clearance for the application of AI decision-support software in lung cancer diagnosis and is reimbursable under CMS New Technology APC. Virtual Nodule Clinic has been implemented in healthcare systems across the USA and Europe.

Media Contact
James Hounsell
james.hounsell@evolene.co.uk