Over the years, local stakeholders in Pakistan have published regarding the impact of CAD4TB in the nation. The most extensive TB screening program with CAD4TB in the world, its implementation has garnered much attention.
2020
According to a 2020 paper, CAD4TB performed on par with expert human readers. While the cost per screened subject using the CAD4TB 6 is almost half compared to screening without, the daily throughput is nearly 2.5 times higher. They concluded that CAD4TB offers good diagnostic accuracy as a triage for TB screening among diabetes patients. A previous 2018 research paper, followed by another paper in 2020, proved that CAD4TB could save molecular tests like the Xpert tests.
2021
In a study, researchers concluded that in low-income, high-burden TB settings, triage using AI-based CXR interpretation (incl. CAD4TB) could be cost-effective when compared to the standard practice among persons with suspected TB.
Similarly, according to a study conducted in the same year, community-based screening with innovative activities, which comprises sensitive screening and diagnostic tools like digital X-ray and CAD4TB, effectively improves TB case detection.
Another study in Pakistan featuring the Zero TB initiative concluded that CAD4TB is a valuable tool for mass screening TB in high-burden developing countries. The results also suggest combining CAD and symptomatology to screen a symptomatic population is a more cost-effective and reasonably effective algorithm. In Pakistan, researchers realised that CAD4TB as a triage tool could minimise the use of expensive molecular tests in low-resource settings.
