The Volpara Health Technologies Ltd (ASX: VHT) share price has been a strong performer today.
In afternoon trade the healthcare technology company's shares are up almost 4% to $1.87.
Why is the Volpara share price racing higher?
Investors have been buying Volpara's shares following the release of the results of an eight-year DENSE breast screening trial published in the New England Journal of Medicine.
According to the release, the DENSE trial started collecting patients eight years ago and involved about 40,000 women. It is the first randomised controlled study on the clinical utility of breast MRI supplemental screening for women with extremely dense breasts.
Volpara provided the Dutch researchers with the VolparaDensity software used to automatically and objectively assess breast density in the DENSE trial.
Women whose breasts were judged to be extremely dense were selected for breast MRI screening. The trial assigned 8,061 women to the MRI group, and 32,312 to the mammography-only control group.
The trial found that: "The interval-cancer rate (the number of cancers not detected at screening but found between screenings) was 2.5 per 1,000 in the women invited to have MRI, compared to 5.0 per 1,000 in the control group (P<0.001). 80% of the interval cancers in the MRI group were from women who opted not to have MRI despite being invited. The positive predictive value was 17.4% for recall for additional testing and 26.3% for biopsy. The false positive rate was 79.8 per 1,000 screenings."
Volpara's founder and CEO, Dr Ralph Highnam, believes this will draw attention to ways of making breast screening more effective and is a significant milestone for both Volpara and women globally.
Dr Highnam said: "The evidence from this study is quite clear: using VolparaDensity to assess breast density and then offering MRI screening to women with extremely dense breasts resulted in a significant reduction of 50% in interval cancers. Population-based screening programs now have solid evidence on which to consider the pros and cons of more personalized screening."
Elsewhere in the industry, the ResApp Health Ltd (ASX: RAP) share price is also charging higher today. Investors have been buying its shares after it announced a deal with a telehealth platform provider.
