A new, unique web app which determines a woman’s risk of developing breast cancer was yesterday launched by Italian and Maltese research group Imagenx.

The Imagenx Touch identifies women at low, medium or high risk of breast cancer according to the data entered, such as family history, age and lifestyle habits.

It also provides tailor-made, practical recommendations to help prevent breast cancer.

Speaking yesterday at a seminar titled ‘Selfies for those at risk’, head of screening services Joe Psaila explained that the aim was to identify people at risk before any tangible symptoms such as lumps manifested themselves. Breast cancer has a 95 per cent survival rate if diagnosed early. “We aim to make technology more widely available. Society has matured and it is time to put technology into the hands of the Maltese.”

Half of premature deaths could be prevented by changing one’s bad health habits.

While breast screening in Malta is available for women between 50 and 65 years of age, the app targets a significantly younger population aged between 16 and 40 years of age which nevertheless may be susceptible to breast cancer.

This is the second phase of the Imagenx (Italia Malta Genome Breast Cancer Cross Border Risk Surveillance) project, a €2.5 million EU co-funded project between Italy and Malta.

The first phase was rolled out last year through a web-based database to be used by doctors at the National Health Screening Service.

Some 14,000 women are called for breast screening each year, with some 300 cases of cancer being detected and successfully treated.

Part of the Imagenx project also involves comparing 200 people with cancer with 400 people without cancer to gauge and compare their activity, lifestyle habits and place of residence throughout the past 20 to 30 years.

The app can be accessed on https://myrisk.eu .