A contest run by the U.S. Centers for Medicare and Medicare Services (CMS) to showcase healthcare applications of artificial intelligence (AI) found no suitable candidates from the world of medical imaging.
Twenty-five participants were selected to advance to stage I of the Artificial Intelligence Health Outcomes Challenge, which is designed to accelerate the development of AI applications that help healthcare providers predict clinical outcomes and keep patients healthy.
The contest is part of CMS' implementation of President Trump's Executive Order on Maintaining American Leadership in Artificial Intelligence, which was issued in February 2019.
CMS opened the contest up to candidates in March, with contestants completing an online application with a slide deck that provided information about their entry and their solution. The application period closed in June with over 300 entrants, according to CMS.
Of the 25 candidates that made it to stage I, up to seven will continue to stage II; each will receive $60,000 and further support to develop their algorithms using CMS datasets. CMS will announce the stage II finalists in April 2020, it said. The challenge's grand prize winner will receive $1 million and the runner-up will receive $230,000.
![A normal mammogram confirmed by three-year radiologic follow-up illustrates reader-marked regions of interest (ROIs) during (A) unaided (round 1) and (B) artificial intelligence (AI)–assisted (round 2) reading. Each colored dot represents an ROI for recall by a human reader. Readers could mark more than one ROI per case, represented by multiple dots of the same color. During AI-assisted reading, the AI system displayed three visible prompts: two with suspicion of malignancy scores of 35% (left mediolateral oblique [L MLO] and craniocaudal [L CC]) and one with a suspicion of malignancy score of 10% (right craniocaudal [R CC]), shown as polygonal overlays. Without AI, six of 10 readers (60%) marked a false-positive ROI. With AI assistance, this fell to two of 10 (20%). R MLO = right mediolateral oblique.](https://img.auntminnie.com/mindful/smg/workspaces/default/uploads/2026/07/2026-07-14-radiology-mammogram-ai-auto-bias.H0bYO8QlWs.jpg?auto=format%2Ccompress&dpr=2&fit=crop&h=167&q=70&w=250)
