Thank you, you are an inspiration!

On average, it takes 10 months for children to receive an arthritis diagnosis from the moment the pain begins.

The journey to an arthritis diagnosis is challenging – from visiting multiple specialists to going through painful and expensive diagnostic tests, with some tests even requiring a general anesthetic.

Sadly, some children will already have permanent joint damage or vision loss by the time they are diagnosed. Many will have their childhood interrupted with regular injections, infusions and medications with side effects that make them sick. This means more time away from school for the child and more time off work for the parents.

The damage of arthritis in childhood also causes a ripple-effect into adulthood with higher unemployment, body image issues, difficulty to form relationships and sexual dysfunction.

52,000 people in Australia, including Josh, are unable to work due to arthritis.

Dr Zhibin Liao conducts his research at the Australian Institute for Machine Learning and says although his multi-disciplinary team are in the early stages of this project, AI has the potential to save people from the ‘unnecessary pain’ of juvenile arthritis.

“Currently, there is no single test to diagnose juvenile arthritis and it can be difficult to detect early changes on scans,” says Dr Liao.

“Our research aims to leverage AI to automatically analyse X-ray and MRIs in order to find an association between juvenile arthritis and imaged joint characters and make those findings visualisable. Our AI can automate such steps in a short time and provide radiologists, GPs and rheumatologists with valuable diagnostic insights.”

If everything goes well, the research team will develop a juvenile arthritis detection algorithm which can give clinicians a set of arthritis prediction scores and highlight the potential location where the algorithm can see arthritis symptoms. This will translate into a valuable toolset that can aid rheumatologists and GPs in early detection.

In short, Dr Liao’s research has the power to have a remarkable impact across Australia! 

Your action today will inspire many others to join us in our shared mission to fight against disease and illness by funding vital medical research and patient care services in the community.

We know that people are more likely to give—or give more—when donations from a gift-match fund can match their donations. For example, when they give $100, a further $100 gets added to the gift-match fund to double their impact.

With your gift, we will be able to announce the amount available for gift-matching to our other supporters so we can raise as much funds as possible for this lifesaving project!