The Ministry of Health (MOH) and the Ministry of Technology & Communications (MOTC) launched on Thursday the actual implementation phase of the ‘Artificial Intelligence in breast cancer detection’ at the Royal Hospital.

The launching ceremony was held at the National Heart Center under the auspices of Minister of Health H.E. Dr. Ahmed Mohammed Al Saidi with the presence of H.E. Eng. Azza Al Ismaili, Minister of Technology & Communications, in addition to representatives from public and private institutions.

The MOH’s Director General of Information Technology Abdullah Al Raqadi, stressed the ministry’s pursue in keeping pace with the Fourth Industrial Revolution technologies to benefit patients and the Omani community. He pointed out that after the success of project initial implementation, the ministry decided to implement the system in five hospitals starting in RH then Khoula hospital and to be further implemented successively.

H.E. Engineer Minister of MOTC acknowledged the launching of the national project   that should be accorded priority in view of its significance in diagnosing breast cancer. H.E. Eng. Al Ismaili emphasized that MOH has started to deploy the AI technology in breast cancer detection comparing the results with the conventional detection method in order to determine its accuracy. Due to the promising outcomes of the pilot study, the Ministry took the decision of preceding with the AI project implementation in five hospitals hoping to be extended to other hospitals.  She added that this step would serve the advancement of services provided by the Sultanate’s public organizations and improve the efficacy and efficiency of the various fields.   

Dr. Salem Al Ruzaiqui, MOTC Executive President praised the MOH interest in adopting AI in the health sector setting and its keenness to form Artificial Intelligence in Health Sector Committee between the Ministries to work on the projects that serves the health sector and study implications of integrating the Fourth Industrial Revolution and AI technologies in this essential sector in Oman.  

Implementing the system in healthcare environment would have several benefits on workflow, efficiency, cost, and equity of care as explained by the projects working group.

Within the upcoming period, the MOH in collaboration with the MOTC are seeking to implement the AI technology in 4 other hospitals with the purpose of measuring the system’s competency and the possibility of implementing it in the rest of the Sultanate’s hospitals through connecting and integrating the system with Ashifa and the Digital Scan systems.

Breast cancer is most of common diseases as it represents 24.4 percent of all registered cancer incidents in the Sultanate and 11.6 percent of the total diagnosed cancer cases worldwide.

Currently, more that 200 new cases of cancers is diagnosed annually in the Sultanate and the number is expected to rise to 975 case by 2040.