Today, patients experience diagnostic errors at alarming rates while healthcare costs continue to escalate uncontrollably. Based on the data from the Institutes of Medicine and others, it is estimated that patients experience a diagnostic error approximately 15%-30% of the time and healthcare waste topples $750B annually. Moreover, misdiagnosis rates for cancer may be increasing. Legacy expert-information systems with F-rating interfaces are clearly contributing to poor outcomes and exploding data is further exacerbating problems.  For radiologists, the volumes of medical images have increases roughly 10-fold over the last 20 years. While healthcare’s digital transformation leveraging new technologies such as “artificial intelligence” (or AI) hold great promise for solving these massive problems, early attempts at applying AI in radiology have, for the most part, failed.  Studies from the American College of Radiology (ACR) show that brittle AI algorithms on standard 2D medical images in real-world clinical environments fail >93% of the time. Evidence also suggests these algorithms applied in combination with legacy interfaces actually increase the time it takes for experts to make a decisions.  Further, these efforts do not create core data stitching needed for critical-need applications for precision Imaging, such  as for cancer. In short, early attempts at using AI have not directed us along the correct path of innovation toward healthcare’s “true north” of value-based care.   

As a physician, clinical radiologist, cancer imaging expert, and MRI expert, Dr. Moira Schieke (Founder and CEO) brought a unique perspective to defining the optimal pathway for healthcare’s digital transformation. Dr. Schieke founded Cubismi to create a foundational technology to help solve today’s diagnostic error crisis and dismantle legacy IT system barriers which inhibit translation of critical-need cancer technology. Dr. Schieke aims to use Cubismi’s interactive diagnostic decision intelligence (IDDI) EMERGE™ platform to propel a new standard of precision cancer care. 

 

Laying a Robust Decision Flow™ Foundation 

 

Cubismi was born of a critical need for cancer imaging innovation for earlier detection and better management of cancer. Given her direct clinical insight as a radiologist and her research in MRI and cancer imaging, Dr. Schieke was able to better “diagnose” the problems of today’s legacy systems.  She was able to design a “real” solution to successfully translate this critical-need technology into routine clinical care. 

According to Cubismi’s thesis, the “real” problem is the fundamental lack of proper human-information interaction (HII) systems design for healthcare professionals which is causing declining expert decision performance in complex and chaotic decision spaces.  As any healthcare professional today understands, it takes far too long on today’s IT systems to gather needed information for each decision which are most often highly complex. The time needed to gather the necessary data is increasing as the volumes and variety of health data in increasing exponentially.  In short, clinical decisions are becoming more and more complex. And, experts make decisions often under great time pressures and stress, and with the burden of the impact of their decisions on people’s health and well-being.  In contrast to groups that attempted to claim they could automate expert decision-making, leading AI experts recognize that algorithms may be able to outperform experts in tasks for categorization leveraging massive datasets, yet lack the core human capabilities needed to make high quality decisions in complex and chaotic decision spaces.  Therefore, we can’t create successful digital transformation by simply latching AI onto legacy HII systems that don’t fundamentally solve declining decision performance.  We shouldn’t aim to dangerously automate decisions that experts should make.  Instead, Cubismi aims to augment expert decisions with a foundational HII system that supports high quality patient-care decisions, lowers cognitive effort, and lowers task time for each and every decision.  

Cubismi’s EMERGE™ platform will deliver a unique and novel bundle of SaaS products and services for healthcare systems and private practices that will improve and later augment expert decision performance.  The company has coined this bundle, DECISION FLOW™. 

 

Novel Analytics to Power High Quality Patient Outcomes

 

Cubismi’s platform provides an optimal 3D data mesh to power the most advanced known available analytics for cancer. This data mesh organizes data from many data sources, such as medical imaging, genetics, and clinical data, to patient anatomy across all time points.  This “stitching” technology is used for more powerful analytics for identifying biomarkers in patient tissues.  A biomarker is a measurable indicator of some biological state or condition.  Biomarkers in clinical medicine can be used to determine the probability of disease, such as cancer, the presence of a certain genetic profiles, responses to treatment, etc.  Numerous studies support the use of stitching for better AI analytics.  For example, researchers at MIT showed increase detection of early cancer on mammograms by stitching together mammograms across multiple timepoints. 

In addition, the Cubismi platform also leverages decision intelligence (DI) analytics, a novel type of analytics which can be applied across entire patient journeys and can link to patient outcomes.  DI is a top Gartner trend for 2022 with proven results for better outcomes and business value in multiple other domains, but with limited penetration thus far in healthcare.  For medicine, DI promises to connect decision performance metrics to patient outcomes, for a potential leap forward for healthcare institutions to have better insight needed to optimize patient outcomes at lower costs. 

 

Facilitating a Paradigm Switch

 

Cubismi is currently at the fulcrum of a paradigm switch to IDDI for radiologists and other physicians. It is pursuing disruptive, yet principle-based innovation responsibly with a core design that realigns human-information interaction (HII) system design around patient care outcomes, while assuring critical benefits for physician expert and healthcare system leader decision-makers.  With its EMERGE™ platform, the company will take the best systems-level cloud designs and top execution to generate platform-level success and large-scale social impact. Cubismi’s team of leading experts will continue to strive to responsibly validate and build its EMERGE™ cloud platform and user products. While AI Automation groups seek to automate existing questions doctors ask today using artificial intelligence, Cubismi aims to empower its community of physicians and researchers to ask new questions. It aims to constantly pursue the most advanced and ergonomic ways to visualize and interact with medical big data and precision analytics into the future.

 

Optimistic Perspective:

 

Cubismi’s EMERGE™ interactive diagnostic decision intelligence (IDDI) platform will deliver a unique and novel bundle of SaaS products and services for healthcare systems and private practices that will improve and later augment expert decision performance.  Dr. Schieke aims to use Cubismi’s EMERGE™ platform to propel a new standard of precision cancer care. 

 

Quote:

 

“Through my journey in founding Cubismi, I have became acutely aware of the primary importance of the real-world clinical experience and insight of medical professionals for designing healthcare’s human-information interaction systems of the future. It’s a complex systems design problem, and many groups have failed to generate significant benefits.  Yet, I am more optimistic than ever that the right multi-disciplinary teams combined with access to leading cloud technology can set us on the path to value-based care through digital transformation.”

 

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