The National Institute for Health and Care Research is contributing around 1 million euros to develop a new technology called Organ Quality Assessment (OrQA). The new method is expected to revolutionise the current organ transplant system that could help millions of lives. It is reported that this method works in the same way as facial recognition works. It will help evaluate the quality of organs that need to be transplanted.

With the arrival of this technology, around 200 more patients will receive kidney transplants, and 100 more will receive liver transplants in the UK. Clin Wilson, the co-lead of this project and transplant surgeon at Newcastle upon Tyne Hospitals Foundation Trust, said, “transplantation is the best treatment for patients with organ failure, but unfortunately, some organs can’t be used due to concerns they won’t function properly once transplanted. Here the software we have developed ‘scores’ the organ quality and aims to support surgeons in assessing if the organ is healthy enough to get transplanted. Our ultimate hope is that OrQA will result in more patients receiving life-saving transplants and enable them to lead healthier longer lives.”

When it comes to organ transplantation, decisions should be made as quickly as possible because an organ can be preserved outside of the body only for a limited time. Professor Hassan Ugail, who leads the team of image analysis for the project, says they are developing a deep learning algorithm that can be trained using thousands of images of human organs to evaluate images of donor organs efficiently than what the human eye can see. He says “this ultimately mean a surgeon could take a photo of the donated organ upload it to OrQA, and get an immediate answer as to how best use the donated organ”.

The project is backed by NHS Blood and Transplant, Quality in Organ Donation biobank and NIHR Blood and Transplant Research Unit and academics from Universities of Oxford and New South Wales. Health Minister Neil O’Brien mentions the technology as ‘revolutionary’ and encourages everyone to register their organ donation decision.

Professor Lucy Chappell, CEO of NIHR, says this is another example of how AI can enhance the healthcare system and make it more efficient. Per the report, experiments have already carried out in liver, kidney and pancreas transplantation and pre-clinical testing of liver and kidney as well. In addition, the OrQA software is expected to be ready for a licensing study in NHS within two years. Also, they are not ignoring the possibility of marketing the tool worldwide.