NEC Laboratories Europe and Data-Driven.AI are working together to enhance medical laboratory diagnosis and increase the effectiveness of preventive health measures and early clinical intervention to improve the well-being of patients.

If detected early, many illnesses and diseases can be managed or resolved without serious complications. However, by the time recognizable symptoms present themselves, conditions may already be advanced. In addition, doctors may miss symptoms that call for a specific range of tests to confirm a diagnosis.

Giampaolo Pileggi, Project Manager in Biomedical AI at NEC Laboratories Europe, explains, "The human body is incredibly complex, its organ systems working in harmony to keep us healthy. Over time, a minor issue with one system can quickly become serious and affect others." He adds, "Doctors can greatly benefit from AI systems that can uncover hidden correlations in medical data, detecting even the slightest anomalies that may indicate an imbalance in the body. These advanced tools can help physicians to intervene promptly, improving diagnosis and patient care."

In regions such as Europe, where age-related illnesses are common, prevention and early-stage intervention are critical to help maintain healthy living and control health services costs.

Standard blood tests identify low or elevated levels that may be cause for concern, thus providing clear hints to problematic anomalies, but diagnosing an underlying cause often requires further investigation.

NEC Laboratories Europe and Data-Driven.AI are using machine learning to identify unique patterns in blood results that may call for further investigation. Using embedding propagation, NEC technology combines blood analysis information with other patient information to build a condensed representation of their health, which can be used to help predict future patient conditions through additional recommended testing.

Diego Facchini, CEO and founder of Data-Driven.AI, says, "As humans, we exhibit characteristic responses to infections, illnesses or imbalances within our bodies, which can be detected through patterns in normal blood values or specific markers found in laboratory diagnostics." He further explains, "The continuous training and refinement of AI models have the potential to revolutionize early disease detection by identifying subtle deviations in a person's health that might be overlooked by traditional methods. By leveraging machine learning algorithms and vast datasets, AI can enhance diagnostic accuracy and improve predictive capabilities, which represent a significant breakthrough in the field of disease detection and prevention."

NEC technology's ability to detect subtle nuances in a patient's well-being or current health status has a wide range of potential applications, such as predicting unexpected events in intensive care units and helping diagnose long COVID and the early onset of neurodegenerative diseases such as Parkinson's.