IN THE MEDIA
University of Chile and UDD lead PRECISION-AI, the artificial-intelligence program for precision oncology that PROTEGER is part of
By Oncoger Team ·
The University of Chile published a note about PRECISION-AI, the technology program it leads together with Universidad del Desarrollo to apply artificial intelligence to cancer detection and treatment in Chile. The initiative was awarded CORFO funding under the call "Technology Programs for the use and adoption of Artificial Intelligence in Chilean Industry", will run for five years and represents a total investment of 5 billion Chilean pesos. PROTEGER, Oncoger's platform, is one of the seven projects in its portfolio, and Dr. Gonzalo Navarrete is part of the University of Chile Faculty of Medicine team taking part in the program.
$5,000 M
total investment, in Chilean pesos
5
years of program duration
7
AI projects in the portfolio, PROTEGER among them
2
international partners: MIT and the London AI Centre for Value-Based Healthcare
What PRECISION-AI aims for
This program seeks to put artificial intelligence at the service of people, accelerating diagnosis and personalizing cancer treatments. Our goal is to generate validated, scalable technological solutions that improve patients' quality of life and strengthen the national health system.
Who leads it
At UDD, the initiative is led by Dr. Ricardo Armisén, director of the Precision Oncology Ring in Chile, together with the Institute of Sciences and Innovation in Medicine (ICIM) and researchers Pablo Pizarro and Karen Oróstica of the Data Science Institute, in charge of the design and integration of the predictive models and the coordination of the clinical pilots. At the University of Chile, the deputy director and co-creator of the project is Dr. Arnaldo Marín, of the Basic-Clinical Oncology Department of the Faculty of Medicine, joined by Drs. Katherine Marcelain and Ricardo Verdugo, Dr. Gonzalo Navarrete —of the University of Chile Clinical Hospital and a member of PROTEGER— and Dr. Roberto Estay, of Hospital del Salvador.
The portfolio: seven projects in two groups
The portfolio organizes existing research and development projects into two large groups: detection and diagnosis, and oncology patient management, both in treatment decisions and along the patient's pathway. PRECISA, TUMORSEC and PROTEGER are the initiatives led by University of Chile academics.
Detection and diagnosis
- ONCOVALOR · metastatic-risk prediction in lung cancer.
- GENOMAS · precision medicine based on genomic analysis and sequencing.
- PRECISA · personalized assistant to reduce risk and support early detection.
- TUMORSEC · prediction of therapy response in breast cancer through multi-omic analysis.
- TIRADS · thyroid-nodule risk from ultrasound and clinical data, to reduce unnecessary biopsies.
Oncology patient management
- AIDA · intelligent agents for patient data and interaction management.
- PROTEGER · AI-assisted geriatric oncology assessment platform to improve the support of older patients (Oncoger).
In addition, the Oncovida Cancer Center, represented by Mauricio Verdejo, joins as an associate entity from the private sector and, in collaboration with AIDA, will address the design of the patient pathway with conversational agents from diagnostic suspicion through follow-up.
Federated data and a future data lake
The portfolio is complemented by a key line of action: a federated, secure, ethical and scalable data infrastructure that will make it possible to train AI models without compromising patient privacy. It may build on platforms such as the Federated Learning Interoperability Platform (FLIP) of the London AI Centre for Value-Based Healthcare, with the collaboration of Intelimed.ai, led by Alan Nudman, and is expected to become accessible in the future to the national and international ecosystem for validating new tools.
We hope to finish being able to begin creating a data lake; that is, a well-documented, complete and diverse set of data, federated and anonymized, so that it is not possible to trace whom that information belongs to, that can be useful for research and contribute to developing public policy, faithfully representing the national reality.
The project also envisions creating a consortium to install these platforms in the associated institutions and to transfer them to those interested in federated data-management models, with strategic alliances and competitive funds that ensure their sustainability. Dr. Marín's declared goal is that, with partners such as the MIT Jameel Clinic and the London AI Centre, the program can become a technology hub for artificial intelligence focused on cancer.
For Oncoger, being part of PRECISION-AI means validating and scaling PROTEGER within a national ecosystem with shared data infrastructure, coordinated clinical pilots and academic and international backing: the most direct path for a tool born of the public system to reach clinical teams across the country.