If you ask most people to define healthcare, they’ll likely describe what happens after someone becomes sick and begins receiving care. But could healthcare begin before illness ever showed up? Rather than waiting for patients to experience symptoms, what if care started with prevention, early detection, and access to critical diagnostic tools?
Screening healthy people for a range of diseases makes early detection and intervention possible. Depending on the disease, those diagnosed before symptoms arise could potentially slow or even avoid onset. Finding diseases, like cancer, at earlier stages increases a patient’s treatment options and the likelihood of survival. By expanding screening for a range of diseases, more people would have the chance to stay healthy longer—and this shift has the potential to significantly transform population health.
Large-scale screening to find and treat diseases sooner
Radiology plays a central role in early detection, often serving as the first step toward diagnosis and treatment. That’s why imaging is key to the shift from reactive to proactive care. At DeepHealth, we see early disease detection as foundational to advancing population health.
Screening higher volumes of healthy people for the earliest signs of disease, when onset can still be avoided, slowed or more easily treated, has huge benefits. Identifying diseases like cancer or neurodegenerative conditions before symptoms emerge can lead to earlier intervention, more effective treatment, and better patient outcomes. Screening programs for breast and lung cancer already show how imaging powered by AI helps radiologists detect cancer at earlier, more treatable stages—that’s life-changing.
In addition to improving detection rates, AI-powered solutions also streamline the imaging workflow and create better experiences for care teams—from reducing recalls and reporting times to enabling remote image acquisition and collaboration—so large-scale screening programs are easier and more feasible to deliver. Not only does this make screening more effective, it helps give more people access to early disease detection.
Moving from high-tech to high-impact
My own journey into healthcare began as a teenager facing a rare finding that was difficult to diagnose. The technology existed to help me, but it wasn’t easily accessible. I remember months of stress, uncertainty, and travel to get the care I needed. That experience left a deep impression on me—not just about the importance of early diagnosis, but about the painful gap between innovation and access. Since then, I’ve spent my career focused on closing that gap: helping deliver meaningful innovations that don’t just push boundaries but actually reach the people who most need them. Innovation is not about the most complex technology—it’s about the right technology, applied in the right way. A sophisticated diagnostic tool, for example, is meaningful only if it’s available to patients when they need it.
That’s why I see the need for population health strategies that focus on access to high-quality imaging and early disease detection through screening. Whether it’s screening for breast, lung or prostate cancer or early work in neurodegenerative conditions, the aim is to reach more people with smarter, more efficient care. Accomplishing this requires not only leveraging AI-powered clinical solutions, but also embedding AI in cloud-native, interoperable systems that plug into existing workflows. This is how we make it easy for practices to deploy and seamless for radiologists to use.
The power of clinical integration
One of DeepHealth’s most important—and unique—strengths in the health technology industry is our vertical integration with RadNet, a leading US provider of diagnostic imaging services. This close connection with care delivery positions us at the intersection of clinical insight and technical innovation. Our solutions are solidly driven by clinical needs, not theoretical ones. We don’t develop in isolation. We build alongside providers and patients, innovating in response to challenges radiologists and care teams are experiencing on the ground. This gives us the ability to rapidly validate and iterate in clinical practice—which means we can scale faster and make a greater impact. I’m not aware of any other health informatics company that has this kind of relationship.
Advancing population health on a global scale
Today, our focus is on expanding large-scale screening in the US and Europe. But with rising non-communicable diseases, like cancers, global demand for imaging and skilled radiologists and technologists will continue to grow. In many countries, access to basic diagnostic imaging is still limited or nonexistent. In these settings, AI-powered solutions could play a transformative role, helping to close gaps where clinical expertise is scarce.
This isn’t about replacing clinicians; it’s about supporting clinical teams. It’s about reducing unnecessary non-clinical tasks and making sure preventive care, early detection, and critical diagnostic tools are more accessible. Real progress will depend on collaboration among tech innovators, policymakers, healthcare providers, and global health organizations. Ultimately, the future of health will not be defined by what we build, but by how widely and effectively it reaches the people who need it most.
Unleashing AI’s potential to radically improve health
To put it another way, novel but impractical innovations won’t lead us to the next frontier of healthcare. The future will be shaped by large-scale impact: how many more patients we can reach, how many more conditions can we detect earlier, and how efficient can we make care delivery?
At DeepHealth, we are harnessing the power of AI to make earlier disease detection through screening possible for more people. This important shift in thinking isn’t a short-term strategy for DeepHealth. It’s central to our purpose. It is why we are empowering breakthroughs in care through imaging. Because we see a future where healthcare begins with health, not illness.
Learn how DeepHealth solutions can help orchestrate and scale high-volume cancer screening and disease assessment programs to reimagine population health.
