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Hallym University Chuncheon Sacred Heart Hospital sets out to develop a microbiome-based artificial intelligence (AI) solution that diagnoses chronic liver disease and predicts its onset through a simple fecal test.

On 27th of July, Professor Seok Ki-tae of the Institute of Digestive Medicine at Hallym University Chuncheon Sacred Heart Hospital announced that from this year's December to 

November 2025, he will collaborate with private companies such as AIDOT, Gosopoong, and EDGC, they will promote the development of precision medical AI solutions for diagnosing and predicting chronic liver disease.

Chronic liver disease without proper treatment is the fourth cause of death after cancer, heart, and cerebrovascular disease. The prevalence of liver disease in Korea is 30%, and 

chronic liver disease can be properly treated if detected early. However, otherwise, since there is currently no accurate diagnosis method so the progression of the disease is fast, so many processes such as liver function test, ultrasonography, and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) must be performed to treat chronic liver disease.

Accordingly, the research team plans to apply next-generation sequencing (NGS) to microbiome research to identify alcoholic liver disease and apply it to AI algorithms.

In addition, the data of 1,000 carefully selected retrospective microbiome cases among 7,600 cases of microbiome derived from human beings will be trained (validated) to increase 

accuracy.

This AI solution diagnoses liver disease abnormalities of test clients by classifying them into four stages: normal (fatty liver), hepatitis, cirrhosis, and liver cancer.

In particular, it is possible to predict how likely the liver will progress to cirrhosis and how likely it is to be confirmed through the analysis of the examiner's intestinal microbiome.

Ki-tae Suk, a professor of gastroenterology at Hallym University Chuncheon Sacred Heart Hospital said, “If this AI solution is completed, accurate diagnosis or prediction of chronic 

liver disease will be possible through a simple stool test at primary and secondary medical institutions, which will help reduce social costs caused by alcoholic liver disease."

Also said “We will do our best to make innovative advances in the prediction and early diagnosis of liver diseases, such as drastically reducing the time and cost of microbiome and 

genome analysis."

27th. Jul. 2021. / New Daily Economy / Reporter Geun-bin Park