Advancing Treatments for Lung Diseases with Eva van Rikxoort from Thirona

Today’s guest uses AI for the personalized treatment of early-stage lung cancers and other lung diseases that need localized treatment. Eva van Rikxoort, a scientist in medical image analysis and the CEO and Founder of Thirona, started studying AI 20 years ago. Her interest in lung imaging and the translation of it with the help of AI led her to found her company which develops medical image analysis software based on deep learning.

In this episode, she explains more about what Thirona does and the challenges they encounter when working with CT images. You’ll learn about the importance of online learning components for the future of AI applications for medical purposes and how the team at Thirona ensures that the technology it develops provides the right assistance to doctors, patients, and researchers. Tune in to find out more about the role of AI in the future of personalized medicine and lung disease treatments.

Key Points:

• An introduction to Eva van Rikxoort, her experience in AI, and how she founded Thirona.
• What Thirona does and why this is important for treating disease.  
• How the company uses machine learning in multiple ways for different models to predict various outputs. 
• The types of challenges Thirona encounters when working with CT images.
• How they deal with situations where clinicians disagree or annotations are not reliable. 
• How the regulatory process affects the way Thirona develops machine learning models.
• The importance of online learning components for the future of AI applications for medical purposes. 
• How Thirona ensures that the technology it develops provides the right assistance to doctors, patients, and researchers. 
• Approaches to recruiting and onboarding that have been most successful for Eva’s team.
• Eva’s advice to other leaders of AI-powered startups about trusting your gut and asking for help. 
• How Eva foresees the impact of Thirona in the future in terms of personalized medicine and lung disease treatments.

Quotes:

“[At Thirona] we don't make software that's aimed at radiology, even though medical image analysis is very much a radiology thing, but we really focus on breakthrough treatments that are being developed both by pharma companies but also by biotech companies.” — Eva van Rikxoort

“If you look technically at AI, we could be learning every single day from what we do. I mean, we as [people] do, but our AI models learn in release cycles instead of on a daily basis.” — Eva van Rikxoort

“Next to making something that's highly innovative, you’re also opening a market to this innovation. It's a twofold thing.” — Eva van Rikxoort

“Don't be afraid to ask anyone for help. For example, opinion leaders, doctors, they are very, very happy to help. They really love the innovations in their field.” — Eva van Rikxoort

“I really think the impact of Thirona will be the personalized medicine, the personalized treatment of early-stage lung cancers or any other lung disease that needs localized treatment.” — Eva van Rikxoort

Links:

Eva van Rikxoort

Thirona

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