In late February, the first multi-cancer early screening project, initiated by Alibaba's Hangzhou-based DAMO Academy and powered by AI, was launched in two hospitals in Lishui, Zhejiang Province.

This cutting-edge medical AI technology developed by DAMO Academy is being implemented for the first time and it will achieve large-scale, randomized daily screenings for multiple cancers, including pancreatic cancer.

Traditionally, doctors rely on clinical observations combined with imaging density to assess patients' condition. However, AI can detect subtle differences compared to traditional manual diagnosis. This combination of imaging techniques and AI significantly improves the accuracy and sensitivity of cancer screening. A doctor used to spend 5-15 minutes diagnosing a single disease, but now they can assess multiple diseases in only 2-3 minutes.

Alibaba's DAMO Academy Medical AI Laboratory has developed an intelligent tool called "PANDA" that can screen for cancer. By using AI to assess the regular chest and abdominal CT scans, pancreatic cancer, liver cancer, esophageal cancer, gastric cancer, colon cancer, and other lesions that account for 38.1% of the new cancer cases will be detected. Meanwhile, it also assists doctors in screening, diagnosing, treating, and following up on a total of 13 diseases, including osteoporosis, fatty liver, and pulmonary nodules.

According to Alibaba, in addition to having greater sensitivity compared to technicians, PANDA also demonstrates high specificity, resulting in minimal false positive outcomes. In a 2023's research, PANDA just had one false positive detected in every 1,000 tests, surpassing radiologists by 6.3%.