Can a simple blood test help diagnose leukemia? An AI tool shows promise but still needs work.

Imagine having symptoms that could be leukemia, but you can't get to a specialist for the complex tests needed to confirm it. This is a reality for many people around the world. A team looked at whether an artificial intelligence (AI) tool could help by using just the results from standard blood tests to predict the type of leukemia a person might have. They tested it on a large, diverse group of over 6,200 patients from 20 different centers worldwide. The tool was very good at spotting certain types, like acute myeloid leukemia and a specific subtype called promyelocytic leukemia. But there was a big catch: to get that high accuracy, the tool had to refuse to make a prediction for the vast majority of patients—between 71% and 93% of the time. That's not very helpful for doctors. So, they refined the tool using a different method. This new version was less likely to refuse a prediction, excluding only about 12% of patients, and its accuracy for spotting acute myeloid leukemia in those uncertain cases improved. They also specifically retrained the tool to work better for children. The work shows that AI could one day be a useful support tool, helping more people get a faster, initial indication of their condition using tests they can already get.