Lunit, a company specializing in medical artificial intelligence (AI) solutions, said on Wednesday that it acquired the operating rights in a bid for the Breast Screening New South Wales (BSNSW) state program in Australia.

BSNSW is an Australian state-run program that provides free breast cancer screening to women aged 40 or older in the NSW state. The NSW state government recognized Lunit’s technical accuracy and excellence in the bid and chose them as the final operator, Lunit said.

It is the first time that an AI-based solution has been adopted for a national cancer screening project in a foreign country, said a Lunit official.

The total contract is worth more than 1.6 billion won (AU$1,814,315), and Lunit plans to carry out large-scale verification work in three phases by August 2024.

In the first stage of operation, more than 650,000 mammography image images will be analyzed using Lunit INSIGHT MMG, a mammography AI image analysis solution. Subsequently, prospective validation for program operation will be conducted and in the final stage, Lunit INSIGHT MMG products will be installed at the medical site.

Once the business performance is confirmed through the three-stage verification, Lunit will be able to secure the Australian NSW state government's right to operate BSNSW for the next five years until 2029 without additional bids.

"This is the first time that Lunit has won the right to operate a national health examination program, and this BSNSW operation has already earned us a quarter of last year's total sales," Lunit CEO Seo Beom-seok said. "We will continue to prepare for the rapidly growing demand for national screening programs at home and abroad."