VBD 
Developed based on AI technology by VinBigData, the VinDr will assist radiologists in diagnosing and classifying patients.
A technology solution to medical problems
The three pillars of digital transformation shared at Ehealth Vietnam Summit 2020 taking place on December 29-30 are: smart medical examination and treatment, smart disease prevention and smart management.
About the management method, the Vietnamese healthcare system can learn from the lessons of other countries worldwide. However, when it comes to disease prevention and treatment, differences in biological structure, genetic characteristics, and typical environment of the Vietnamese people, etc lead to difficulties in applying foreign technology, directly affecting the accuracy in practice. To solve this problem, the solution can only be developed by Vietnamese people, resonating with Vietnamese data and Vietnamese resources.
Last June, VinDr – an AI solution for medical imaging developed by Vingroup Big Data Research Institute (VinBigdata), was officially pilot implemented at 108 Military Central Hospital, Hanoi Medical University Hospital and Vinmec International Hospital in Times City. In the last 6 months of the year, the solution was put into operation at provincial hospitals and district health centers in Phu Tho, Binh Dinh, Hai Phong, Lam Dong, etc.
With the first two modules provided as VinDr Chest-XR and VinDr-Mammo, the solution is highly appreciated by the medical board. The average consensus of AI and doctors was 85.7%, while the average consensus among doctors remained at 86.2%. VinDr is capable of supporting real-time diagnosis, detecting 28 types of lesions and pathologies on chest X-ray images, as well as 13 abnormalities on mammograms.
The technology has been researched, developed and trained by experienced radiologists for the past two years. Some prestigious doctors were Prof. Dr. Pham Minh Thong (Bach Mai Hospital), Assoc. Prof. Dr. Lam Khanh (Central Military Hospital 108), Dr. Le Tuan Linh (Hanoi Medical University Hospital), Dr. Nguyen Thu Huong (Vinmec Times City International Hospital), Doctor Ho Hoang Phuong (Tam Anh General Hospital), etc.
VinDr is expected to be able to assist radiologists in minimizing errors in the diagnostic process, shortening the regional gap in the quality of medical examination and treatment.
An assistant for doctors
At Phu Tho General Hospital, Doctor Tran Quang Luc, in charge of the imaging department, said that sometimes he had to read up to 300 chest X-ray films per day and also had to return early results to patients, thus there was not enough time and it was quite stressful.
After two months of testing VinDr, Doctor Luc shared: “This software supports screening patients very quickly, just taking a short period of time. Doctors will not spend time on cases where AI-label is normal, but save efforts to focus on more difficult cases.”
Doctor Hoang Cong Lam, Deputy Director of Phu Tho Provincial General Hospital also emphasized that VinDr application is one of the steps to boost the digital transformation in the provincial hospital. “The hospital’s doctors highly appreciate VinDr’s fast and accurate results in detecting abnormalities. This is also an effective training tool for young doctors who do not have much experience,” shared the deputy director.
To support radiologists in most medical imaging modalities, said Dr. Nguyen Quy Ha, Head of Medical Imaging Department, VinBigdata was expected to launch four more modules to support Chest-CT, Liver-CT, Brain-CT and Brain-MRI diagnosis in 2021. “Our solution aims at assisting doctors in improving accuracy, avoiding omissions, and not replacing doctors”, Dr. Ha emphasized.
For successful digital transformation in the healthcare sector, a prerequisite is to optimize the resources and medical data of the Vietnamese themselves. Previously, VinBigdata has just announced the launch of the largest biomedical data management, analysis and sharing system in Vietnam, opening a data warehouse to the community. With the Vietnamese gene database system, the research community can easily access and directly use it to research and develop made-in-Vietnam solutions that solve health problems for Vietnamese people.
