Sask. AI x-ray project first of its kind in Canada

Portable x-ray machines provided to Peter Ballantyne Cree Nation are the first ever in Canada. (Peter Ballantyne Cree Nation Health Services)

An artificial intelligence (AI) project is expanding healthcare for remote communities in Saskatchewan.

Synthesis Health has delivered portable x-ray machines to Peter Ballantyne Cree Nation. According to the company’s chief medical officer, Deepak Kaura, it’s the first in Canada.

“A lot of these communities have never had x-ray, you know, patients travelled eight or 10 hours for x-ray, and most don't travel,” he told CTV News.

Preventative health manager for the area, Genevieve St. Denis said it was exciting for the community.

“Now that we have these portable x-rays in our communities, with this artificial intelligence platform, we're able to provide instant diagnosis and interventions to our First Nations population and these isolated communities.”

Kaura said it all began in 2008.

“I started thinking about artificial intelligence and its impact that it could have on health care, particularly as a image-based specialist, right, I wanted to see how effective computer vision could be in analyzing the problems that I see on a daily basis, and built the first set of algorithms back then, and you know, it was pretty impressive.”

He started to pursue the idea more in Calgary and then moved overseas to Qatar.

“While I was there, I did a bunch more work in machine learning. And then moved back to Canada,” he said.

He started talks with the then-CEO of the Saskatchewan Health Authority Scott Livingston.

“He said, ‘Tuberculosis is on the rise, and we don't have enough subspecialists, we don't have enough digitization, and we don't have any extra units.’ So I said, ‘Well, what if we built you an artificial intelligence algorithm, that would allow us to do this work and allow you to do this work?’

“We validated it in Saskatchewan, with 28 doctors. And then we went and got Health Canada approval right in the middle of COVID,” Kaura said. “It was the first AI algorithm, and radiology ever approved by Health Canada.”

He said they reached out to Fuji to build the machines and found a way to put x-ray images up into a cloud so it can be accessed by technicians.

“AI algorithm does a lot this in like, a few seconds, and sends the analysis back to the nurse practitioner or to the doctor at the frontline of care,” Karua said.

“We're able to provide right on-site clinical diagnostic services to our First Nations members who live in isolated communities,” St. Denis said. “So right on reserve, in primary care clinics, we can provide that service rather than having to send the patient out and to drive sometimes six, eight hours to a place like a hospital to receive that x-ray. We can do that day.”

Kaura said they hope to expand the project to other communities, including Onion Lake.

“We think that the future is pretty remarkable because this is just the beginning of all the machine learning work that we're doing with Synthesis right now.”