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This AI just changed breast cancer surgery forever.
The FDA just approved Claire, the first AI-powered device that lets surgeons see cancer margins in real-time during breast surgery.
Here’s why this matters:
📊 Current reality: Up to 30% of breast cancer patients need a second surgery because surgeons can’t see if they got all the cancer during the first operation.
The breakthrough: Perimeter Medical Imaging’s Claire uses wide-field optical coherence tomography (OCT) combined with AI trained on over 2 million images. Surgeons can now assess tissue margins instantly, right in the operating room.
Think about what this means for patients:
• One surgery instead of two
• Faster recovery times
• Lower healthcare costs
• Reduced emotional trauma
• Better cosmetic outcomes
This isn’t just another AI announcement. This is AI solving a decades-old surgical challenge that affects 300,000+ women annually in the U.S. alone.
The technology works like an ultrasound for cancer margins, giving surgeons superhuman vision when it matters most.
What excites me most? This shows how AI should work in healthcare: not replacing doctors, but giving them tools that were previously impossible. Real-time tissue assessment during surgery was science fiction just 5 years ago.
As this rolls out nationwide, we’re looking at potentially preventing 90,000 repeat surgeries annually. That’s 90,000 women who won’t need to go through the physical and emotional burden of a second operation.
The real revolution in healthcare AI isn’t chatbots or administrative tools. It’s technologies like Claire that fundamentally change what’s possible in the operating room.
This is what meaningful innovation looks like: solving real problems for real patients with measurable outcomes.
♻️ Repost if you believe AI should enhance surgical precision, not replace surgeons
👉 Follow me, Jonathan Govette, for daily, real-time updates on healthcare technology and business news. LinkedIn Profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jonathangovette/
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Author:
CEO/Co-Founder @ Oatmeal Health | AI Lung Cancer Screening | Almost Became a Doctor | Engineer | Follow to Share What I’ve Learned Along the Way
I help patients get the care they need earlier, preventing late-stage cancer.
That’s been the throughline across three companies and almost 20 years in healthcare. At ReferralMD, we fixed broken referral networks so patients didn’t fall through the cracks. At Oatmeal Health, it’s lung cancer: building the diagnostic and screening infrastructure so the 85% of cases caught too late get caught early instead.
Today as CEO of Oatmeal Health, I lead a team embedding AI into radiology workflows to turn routine lung CT scans into reimbursable cancer risk assessments. We partner with FQHCs to reach underserved communities, and with health systems and payers to make early detection economically sustainable. Think HeartFlow or Cleerly, but for lungs.
Between companies, I advised at Techstars and Plug and Play, mentoring founders building in digital health. That experience shaped how I think about what separates companies that ship from companies that stall: distribution, reimbursement, and clinical trust, not just technology.
I’m a CancerX alumnus, a 3x healthcare founder, and someone who believes the biggest problems in cancer aren’t scientific. They’re operational.
We’re hiring mission-driven builders at Oatmeal Health. If you want to work on something that matters, reach out.
When I’m not working, I’m traveling, mentoring, and keeping up with one very energetic husky. 🐾
Substack – The Oatmeal Bite:
Millions of patients get less care because of who they are, where they live, or how they look. I’m fighting to change that. CEO @OatmealHealth, a startup built for the underserved. The Oatmeal Bite: intel for clinicians, investors, and advocates.
Jonathan Govette
CEO of Oatmeal Health
Substack:
https://oatmealhealthjonathangovette.substack.com/
