How data is helping women detect and defeat breast cancer

It’s Breast Cancer Awareness Month and we’re honoring the cause by partnering with Hippo.AI, an organization that is using data science to help more women detect and defeat this disease. Learn how Hippo.AI is using technology to unite data and develop new ways to improve the lives of more women around the world. 

Viktoria Prantauer, a current student in our Product Management course, was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2017. In her own words, she feels that she was fortunate to be diagnosed correctly and in-time to initiate treatment and overcome the disease – which is not always the case for many women. 

To help more women receive proper diagnoses faster, the Hippo.AI Foundation is launching a digital awareness campaign that encourages women to share crucial data that will help build life-saving algorithms. Using mammogram imagery from breast cancer diagnoses, they will use this visual data to aid in the early detection of breast cancer. 

With the inequality that exists in medical care, this initiative aims to create an open data source where more women – of all backgrounds and income brackets – can access the information necessary to diagnosis this disease. And Viktoria One.Zero is the first global data set of this project thanks to Viktoria’s data donation.

This innovative project is working against the privatization of medical knowledge that has been extracted from data that is being sold and not shared to help diagnose breast cancer. Thanks to Hippo.AI, women can donate a data set to help build a vital source of public information for diagnosing the disease.

This is an amazing example of how we can use our skills as data scientists to help marginalized groups of people, who don’t have the same access to resources. And, at allWomen, this is exactly the kind of initiative that we hope to create developmental space for through our tech courses for women. 

You can support the cause by sharing your own data set to raise awareness! All you have to do is share a photo that will then be transformed into ASCII art to be shared via social media. You can find more info on how to participate here. Or join our chat with Viktoria Prantauer so that you can learn more about the project and get involved.