How Airbus will invest in the fight against cancer… via big data
What do Airbus, the world’s largest aircraft manufacturer, and the Oncopole of Toulouse, a hospital and research center at the forefront in the fight against cancer? At first glance, their work is at odds with each other. But despite appearances, their location in the Pink City is far from being their only point of convergence.
Whether tracking the thousands of planes that fly across the skies every day or analyzing millions of cancer cells, they are increasingly faced with data management. To make progress on these issues, the European aircraft manufacturer and the institute signed a partnership agreement on Wednesday.
“At the hospital, we use complex data, patient life paths, data from examinations, radiology, scanners, microscopy images. There is a real subject which is common with a certain number of manufacturers, in particular Airbus, that of the contribution of engineering sciences to artificial intelligence programs”, assures Professor Jean-Pierre Delord, to the head of the Toulouse-Oncopole Cancer University Institute.
A win-win partnership
The doctors and researchers of the Institute will thus work together with the engineers of Airbus, at the forefront in this field. Because today, as in many industries, digital is taking an increasingly important place in aeronautics. “Over the past few years, we have developed digital analysis tools, such as the system, which collects all flight data from thousands of aircraft around the world and improves flight operations. We have acquired new skills in the field of big data and artificial intelligence. We realized during our exchanges with Prof. Delord that this was also a very important area of modern medicine and research in the fight against cancer. We therefore decided to create this cooperation,” confirms Marc Hamy, director of general affairs at Airbus.
The group had already made inroads into the medical world during the Covid-19 period, adapting diving masks for caregivers to make them more efficient or taking part in the development of respirators. This time, it is its know-how in embedded systems and the dialogues between the different interfaces that will be deployed. In particular to develop technological tools that help physicians make decisions when faced with MRIs, CT scans or patient biological results.
“We are convinced that Airbus has things to learn from the Oncopole also because artificial intelligence technologies are developing very quickly in medicine. It will be up to our engineers, researchers and doctors from the Oncopole to identify joint study projects. We will see the means to be implemented according to the projects identified and what type of specific agreement this can give”, finds Marc Hamy.