Persistent named Google Cloud’s Social Impact Partner of the Year for APAC 2023
What explains the butterfly effect, where the flutter of a wing in one corner of the world can cause a hurricane in another, better than technology? What developers do in an offshore development center or a hackathon can change the status quo, solve long-standing problems, or build new ways of doing old things.
At Persistent, we believe technology can be both transformative for business and have a social impact. Think about the cloud, with its power to supercharge the global flow of data, knowledge and personal views that has led to connected cars, crowd-funded humanitarian campaigns and collaborative platforms such as GitHub, Reddit or Google Workspace. Technological change abstracts complexity, breaks down entry barriers, exposes niche domains and skillsets to a broader user base and saves money, time and often lives.
This was the driving force for our team that participated in and won the Google Cloud Platform Hackathon in 2022. With a cancer researcher, a molecular biologist and two developers, our team created a Google Cloud-backed accelerator that reduced the time to identify Circulating Tumor Cells (CTCs) from eight hours to less than five minutes, which otherwise required specialized microscopy experts. In a pathbreaking solution, the team worked to create an automated, AI-driven analytical workflow that delivered consistent, highly accurate and reliable results. This AI-led standardization can be game-changing in the world of cancer diagnostics, enabling faster cancer discovery that makes all the difference in its prognostics.
One in every four samples collected for cancer detection comes in positive. A molecular biologist, biopharma scientist or onco-clinician must manually adjust the brightness or contrast of blood samples during optical microscopy to identify CTCs from non-CTCs. This proves strenuous since the two have the same cellular features and requires closely watching the sample cells for anomalies. Adding to human eye fatigue is detecting tens of CTCs against billions of blood cells.
Named Zacharias, inspired by the father-son duo who invented the first compound microscope in the late 16th century, our team prioritized CTC image segmentation, mitigating background noise and preparing the image for analysis by an AI algorithm trained on a small dataset of CTC images sourced from a US-based liquid biopsy diagnostic company. The solution, through faster standardized processing, can save 25% in costs, allows for more patient samples to be processed with reduced turnaround time, and helps providers, payers and laboratories bolster top-line numbers.
Watch this video to learn more about their journey
“Google Cloud’s partner awards recognize the significant impact and customer success that our partners have driven over the past year,” says Kevin Ichhpurani, Corporate Vice President, Global Ecosystem and Channels at Google Cloud. “We’re delighted to recognize Persistent as a 2023 Google Cloud Partner Award winner, and look forward to a continued strong partnership in support of our mutual customers.”
“This is an outcome of close collaboration with our in-house Google Cloud experts who helped our solution architects understand the suite of Google Cloud’s AI solutions to create a fully automated, intelligent analytical workflow. The team’s Google Cloud specializations and expertise designations came in handy, and we identified the right tools and solutions for this project – all within a week,” says Pandurang Kamat, Persistent’s Chief Technology Officer.
The solution has garnered support from Persistent Foundation, our CSR arm, and Google Cloud, which has committed to nurturing it beyond a proof of concept into a minimal viable product. The solution’s ability to change the lives of cancer patients and transform the entire cancer healthcare ecosystem – from diagnostics to prognostics – is why Google Cloud recognized Persistent as the 2023 Social Impact Partner of the Year for APAC.
“The transformative power of a solution such as this bears on us to take it beyond hackathons or sandboxes. We have had several interactions with Google Cloud experts, and we are working to liaise with innovation heads to take this to a larger scale. Team Zacharias has done a commendable job, and we are committed to building on the foundation they have laid to change the lives of millions of cancer patients,” says Rajesh Abhyankar, Senior Vice President of Persistent’s Google Business Unit.
Our Partner of the Year recognition is the culmination of an alliance that began more than a decade ago. We collaborate with Google Cloud to solve unique client problems and deliver business value through a dedicated Google Cloud Business Unit boasting hundreds of Google Cloud experts, nearly 50 Google Cloud expertise designations and thousand plus certifications among our staff. This recognition from Google Cloud is a testimony to the positive and lasting impact our solutions can have on the world. Persistent has always approached technology with a responsible, transparent and accountable mindset, and we are committed to creating impactful solutions that further the butterfly effect through technology.
