Precision medicine enhances healthcare by tailoring treatments to individual patients based on personalized factors such as genetics, environmental setting, and lifestyle factors. One critical and often overlooked resource in the precision medicine transformation is the wealth of data captured during endoscopic procedures. Endoscopy videos, typically used for immediate diagnostic purposes, hold immense potential for reshaping clinical outcomes and advancing the future of precision medicine — particularly when augmented by artificial intelligence (AI).
Investing in the systematic use and analysis of endoscopy videos could open new frontiers in drug development, clinical trials, and patient care optimization. By integrating endoscopy videos into AI-driven frameworks, precision medicine will achieve unprecedented insights into disease mechanisms, progression, and treatment responses.
Traditional Use of Endoscopy Videos
Endoscopy is a cornerstone of diagnostic medicine, widely used for visualizing the gastrointestinal (GI) tract, respiratory system, and other internal organs. These procedures result in high-quality video recordings that provide real-time insights into a patient’s condition. However, in most clinical settings, these videos are not routinely saved after the procedure, reducing them to a real-time diagnostic tool rather than a long-term resource. In some cases, still images are captured and saved; however, this approach misses a critical opportunity to utilize video data for advanced analysis, longitudinal studies, and integration with other patient data. Harnessing this data could enable breakthroughs in identifying biomarkers, understanding disease pathology, and evaluating drug efficacy.
Saving Endoscopy Videos Matters
Optimizing Clinical Trials
By incorporating endoscopy video analysis, trials can measure more objective endpoints, such as visual markers of healing or inflammation reduction, allowing for a clearer understanding of a drug’s impact.
Real-World Evidence
Post-market surveillance can benefit from archived endoscopy videos, helping to track long-term patient outcomes and refine treatment protocols.
Enhanced Diagnostic Accuracy
Endoscopy videos can capture subtle abnormalities that might be overlooked during live procedures. High-resolution recordings allow for re-evaluation, second opinions, and advanced computational analysis.
AI-Driven Insights
Machine learning (ML) algorithms trained on extensive databases of endoscopy videos can identify patterns and anomalies invisible to the human eye. This capability may be particularly valuable in early diagnosis of conditions such as colorectal cancer, Barrett’s esophagus, eosinophilic esophagitis and inflammatory bowel diseases (IBD).
Drug Development
Pharmaceutical companies can use AI to analyze endoscopy videos from clinical trials, identifying subtle changes in disease progression or treatment responses that might otherwise go unnoticed.
Personalized Treatment Plans
Saved endoscopy videos provide a visual record of a patient’s condition over time, offering invaluable data for monitoring disease progression and evaluating treatment efficacy.
Training and Education
Archiving endoscopy videos creates a robust resource for training medical professionals and AI models alike. Pharmaceutical companies can leverage data to educate healthcare providers about recognizing treatment responses, side effects, and rare conditions, boosting confidence in their products.
Integration with Precision Medicine Tools
When integrated with other patient data—such as medical records, genomic sequencing, lab results, and other imaging studies—endoscopy videos can provide a comprehensive understanding of a patient’s health. AI analysis of these videos can uncover novel visual biomarkers that correlate with specific genetic or molecular profiles, enabling more targeted therapies. Additionally, advanced modeling tools can leverage this combined data to predict patient outcomes, personalize treatments, and minimize adverse effects.
The Role of Virgo
Virgo provides the leading video capture, management, and AI analysis platform for endoscopy videos. We have helped leading medical centers around the world capture over 1.75 million high-definition endoscopy procedure videos to date — the largest dataset of its kind. Today, doctors and researchers use Virgo to support clinical care, supplement training, improve quality, and accelerate clinical trials. Now we’re developing advanced AI models so that in the near-future, endoscopy videos will advance precision medicine.
The future of precision medicine lies in recognizing and utilizing the valuable data already within reach. Endoscopy videos, when harnessed effectively, will become a cornerstone of this transformation, delivering better outcomes for patients and advancing the healthcare industry’s mission to improve global health.