Kathryn is the founder of Invisio Al, a web-based software and application platform to identify abnormal breast cancer masses, and one of the winners of the 2021 SAB Foundation Social Innovation Awards.
A few years ago, I made a life-altering change to my 15-year clinical profession. I quit my job, and was a bit unsure of what I would do. So I started engaging with Innovation Hub, a technology innovation agency. I did market research on breast health imaging and how my PhD in Clinical Anatomy could alter how we see and approach patients.
“There was a lack of accessible smart software solutions that could pick up those sneaky cancers’
Over the 15 years that I worked in medical imaging, I was frustrated with how the medical system failed women diagnosed with breast cancer, either from poor infrastructure, the lack of education or, most notably, the lack of support going through their treatment journey. Patients tend to get lost in the system, and the medical fraternity tends to focus on the end game of getting them better, and sometimes they forget that it’s a mother, aunt, sister, wife or even a husband going through treatment.
Besides the lack of support, there was also a lack of accessible smart software solutions that could pick up those sneaky cancers, which tend to be missed by the human eye on imaging. This started my PhD research of
developing an algorithm with breast ultrasound images that can assist in
differential diagnosis and segmentation of various types of breast cancer. It was an ‘oh snap’ moment. I’m not a software engineer, but I was busy working with imaging processing software programme for engineering students to see how it can analyse ultrasound images. I realised that I had found a way to differentiate cancers on imaging without the need for on-site histological biopsy, which is not widely available in most regional hospitals.
The algorithm is currently patent pending and shows much promise for other fields of diagnosis. Fast forward two years later, and I am now CEO of my own Al and Deep Machine learning company, MedSolAl Solutions. I am also the founder of Breast Cancer Support Pretoria NPO.
