The Volpara Health Technologies Ltd (ASX: VHT) share price is on the move today following the release of a new product update.
At the time of writing, the healthcare technology company's shares are up 2.5% to $1.38.
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What did Volpara announce?
This morning Volpara announced the launch of BreastED, a first-of-its-kind online breast density training tool in collaboration with DetectED-X.
According to the release, radiologists around the world will have access to this first-of-its-kind online breast density training tool designed to improve their ability to correctly identify women's breast density categories to comply with the Breast Imaging-Reporting and Data System (BIRADS).
The new training module, DensityED, integrates key technologies from Volpara and DetectED-X.
DetectED-X was founded by two University of Sydney radiation and imaging experts. It was the winner of the Best Startup for Social or Community Good at the Australiasian Startup Awards in 2019.
DetectED-X's CEO and Chair of Diagnostic Imaging at University of Sydney, Patrick Brennan, commented: "While we have seen tremendous advances in medical imaging and AI tools to improve the detection of breast cancer, varying levels of skill and experience among radiologists reading mammograms can contribute to interpretation errors and variations in assessing breast density."
"Such errors and variations can delay diagnosis and impact the effectiveness of the treatment of disease, which may have important clinical and economic implications," he added.
What now?
Volpara's founder and CEO, Dr. Ralph Highnam, sees a lot of promise from the collaboration.
He said: "DensityED will help radiologists improve their ability to correctly and consistently perform BIRADS density assessment, which is becoming increasingly important in light of the personalization of screening and expected FDA density reporting regulations. Accurate, reproducible density information is needed to empower women in their breast health journey."
This is opportune timing for the release given potential changes to regulations in the United States. A potential new federal regulation, first proposed in February 2019, would require mammography facilities across the United States to include whether a patient has dense breast composition in the report following her screening mammogram.
