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Health tech in North America is getting an infusion of innovation. The latest partnership between MaRS and Innovate UK, the United Kingdom’s economic development agency, is supporting seven AI-focused startups working to reduce bureaucracy, discover cancer-treating drugs and improve patient outcomes. By gaining insights on Canada’s market dynamics and business potential, these U.K.-based companies aim to make in-roads in North America’s health community.
Jan Gosiewski is the head of data science at Definition Health, a company that’s developed a digital platform to help hospitals operate more efficiently. He’s looking forward to working in Canada where there is, as he says, “appetite for AI innovation,” as well as hospitals that are built on a universal healthcare system similar to the U.K.
During this six-month program, Definition Health and six other U.K.-based companies will network, learn about AI adoption on this side of the Atlantic and use MaRS as a hub to find investors, partners and customers. The entrepreneurs will also gain market intelligence and AI consulting from MaRS as they gear up to pitch to customers in Canada as well as the United States. “Both are very exciting markets for us,” says Gosiewski.
Meet the U.K. startups bringing their innovations to North America this summer.
Rather than simply treating ailments, AINOSTICS is working to help prevent them from developing in the first place. It specializes in diseases that affect the brain such as Alzheimer’s and multiple sclerosis. The latest iteration of their AI platform analyzes patient data, including medical images, previous ailments, blood and DNA. The platform uses the data to detect diseases in patients before symptoms manifest and provide patient prognosis. The company’s technology, currently under development, can detect dementia up to seven years before symptoms occur.
Drug discovery is becoming a speedier process with the proliferation of AI, and one company in Northern Ireland is taking a novel approach. AMPLY Discovery’s expertise is in finding molecules from the natural world, digitizing them and then bioprinting them for testing. The company has an affinity for all things Charles Darwin: Amply uses its AI platform to find particular molecules that have been shaped by millions of years of evolution — meaning they’re especially resilient. Taking inspiration from penicillin, a naturally-derived drug that was discovered almost a hundred years ago, the Belfast-based company believes the biologic drugs discovered by its AI platform can target diseases in a more precise way than conventional drugs.
When it comes to cancer, there’s no one-size-fits-all treatment solution. Sometimes patients respond well to treatment, others show no improvement and experience severe side effects. A lack of a comprehensive testing platform for patient responses to immunotherapy means that health practitioners need to take a trial and error approach. Curenetics is a London-based company that’s working on a way to predict patient responses to treatment. Their AI tool uses patient imaging profiles, tissue examinations, clinical information and DNA to help doctors make better decisions about treatment options for patients. Their current projects include AI platforms that can diagnose oral cancer and predict the success rate of stem cell transplants.
It’s tricky to get a clinical care system to run smoothly. From a patient inquiring about an ailment to getting diagnosed and treated — not to mention the recovery process — there’s a lot of moving pieces. Definition Health is working to streamline all that. The Brighton-based company has developed a digital platform to help hospitals cut down on bureaucracy. The platform has a patient side, too: It offers education on medical procedures, with the aim of easing patient anxiety in the lead up to appointments. Jan Gosiewski, who heads up the data science teams, says the company uses AI to determine the relative risk patients face with medical procedures. He describes the data that the AI provides as a “traffic light system.” It allows hospital staff to make informed decisions about which patients to take in for surgery, and in which order — allowing for the kind of efficiency that can improve overstressed healthcare systems.
Clinical trials are critical for developing new medications. But how do you ensure you have the right candidates so that testing can go smoothly, both for scientists and volunteers? The team at iLof believes it has the answer with its AI-powered cloud platform. The company uses lasers to extract mere microlitres of blood from test candidates, which not only offers patients a less invasive experience, but also provides a richer data set to ensure suitability for drug testing. The company then uses an AI platform to create a molecular profile of the blood sample, which gets uploaded to a cloud, where it’s matched with similar profiles. The process allows for the development of more personalized drugs, as well as faster and more cost-effective clinical trials.
PreciousMD is striving to put an end to the painful and often ineffective biopsies that come with cancer testing, by combining medical imaging and artificial intelligence. Its approach brings the patient’s unique genomic data into play, allowing for a deeper view. Its tech will allow doctors to target cancer cells based on their genetic alterations from the patient’s genome.
Obstructive sleep apnea, a condition that causes poor sleep, goes undiagnosed in children 90 percent of the time. Glasgow-based Seluna is working to reduce that number with an AI platform that can streamline the complexities of the diagnostic process. The Scottish company’s tech provides doctors with speedy diagnoses, and can also maintain accurate results when the patient has multiple ailments — a scenario that often stumps doctors. Seluna also touts modular software architecture; they’re hopeful that their algorithms can be trained to go beyond sleep disorders and treat a range of conditions.
On average, MaRS-supported ventures generate more revenue and create more jobs than their peers. We call this the “unfair MaRS advantage” — see how we make it happen.
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