Volpara Health and Invitae (NVTA) recently established a partnership to develop an integrated breast cancer preventive system. Volpara Health is an AI platform firm based in New Zealand that provides a suite of digital services to streamline and improve breast cancer screening. Volpara's suite of services includes workflow management tools, clinical decision support, and proprietary algorithms measuring breast density, tissue volume, and longitudinal risks and is aimed at technicians in more than 2,000 cancer screening centers in the US, which account for nearly one-third of all mammograms.

Invitae's genetic information management capabilities will be integrated into Volpara's software portfolio. Volpara should expand the value it delivers to US screening centers by incorporating solutions for genetic testing, genetic counseling, and patient risk stratification. Importantly, Invitae and Volpara have embraced the Tyrer-Cuzick model, the gold standard for assessing hereditary breast cancer risk in patients.

Volpara's distribution routes in the United States appear to be beneficial to Invitae. The FDA recently cleared the latest version of Volpara's AI software suite for use on Giotto and Siemens mammography machines.

Finally, we believe Volpara and Invitae could enhance their machine learning capabilities by combining de-identified datasets. Over 40 million photos from 13 million distinct people from 39 different nations have been used to train Volpara's technology. This collaboration could bring another dimension to breast cancer prevention by combining high-quality phenotypic data with Invitae's enormous archive of genetic data.