A cancer center’s fundraising campaign will no longer focus on utilizing artificial intelligence (AI) in cancer treatments following accusations it commercialized the work of employees for private gain, according to a report by The New York Times and ProPublica.
Before the abrupt change, the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center’s annual fundraising campaign was titled “Harnessing Big Data” and would have focused on the center’s research into the use of AI in cancer treatment, the report stated.
However, a previous report revealed the cancer center made “an exclusive deal” with AI startup company Paige.AI to “use digital images of 25 million tissue slides analyzed over decades.” According to the report, Paige.AI was founded by three hospital insiders and involved investors who were on the cancer center’s board.
“Pathologists at the hospital complained that their work was being commercialized for private gain and that patients were not being informed that images of their tissue slides were being shared with an outside company,” the report said. “The hospital and its officials said they did nothing wrong, but acknowledged that they could have communicated better.”
According to a Memorial Sloan Kettering spokeswoman, the fundraising campaign will move forward and focus on patient care.
To read the full report, click the link below.
Danielle covers Clinical Innovation & Technology as a senior news writer for TriMed Media. Previously, she worked as a news reporter in northeast Missouri and earned a journalism degree from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. She's also a huge fan of the Chicago Cubs, Bears and Bulls.