Westmead Dermatology The Australian Cancer Research Foundation (ACRF) Australian Centre of Excellence in Melanoma Imaging and Diagnosis (ACEMID) project was officially launched on the 13 September 2021. It has been 3 years of hard work from our teams at University of Sydney, The University of Queensland and Monash University to get all the governance structure and to install our first devices.
The project will install 15 Vectra WB360 whole body 3D imaging systems in Queensland, New South Wales and Victoria, to create the first worldwide multi-site research centre for the early diagnosis of melanoma.
In NSW, even in the middle of the pandemic, we installed devices in Westmead Hospital and the Melanoma Institute Australia. These sites are ready to recruit participants once the COVID restrictions are lifted.
This would have not been possible without the work of our partners, eHealth NSW, Western Sydney Local Health District, Melanoma Institute Australia and Cancer Institute NSW. We are working with new sites to finalise the ACEMID network in NSW.
This is an amazing project with 3 main components:
1. Diagnostic intelligence, the development of AI to help with screening and diagnosis (we will be collecting the largest database of images associated with curated biomedical data in the world).
2. Clinical and Health Service evaluation, assessing health economic impact of new, innovative models of care.
3. Informatics, in particular telehealth (with the establishment of a state-based eHealth network to facilitate care to rural and remote Australians), eMR integration (within the eMR and PACS systems of each of the medical facilities) and standards development (in particular DICOM for dermatological images).
You can follow the project in the ACEMID website or in our University of Sydney site.
