Chinese startup Infervision emerges from stealth with an AI tool for diagnosing lung cancer

Roughly 600,000 people in China die from lung cancer every year. Already the leading cause of death in the pollution-choked and chain-smoking-prone nation, the incidence of lung cancer among China's citizens is actually going to increase to 800,000 cases per year by 2020. The situation has gotten bad enough that China's state media has not only been forced to report on the spread of cancer in the country, but also lay the blame squarely at the feet of the nation's runaway pollution problem. The issue is compounded by a lack of quality healthcare in much of the country, which means that cancers often go undetected until it's too late. For Chen Kuan, the chief executive and founder of Infervision, a Beijing-based company using machine learning and computer vision to help diagnose cancers, the problem isn't just academic.