Five healthtech start-ups have officially become the first cohort of the Edison Accelerator in EMEA – a healthcare start-up and scale-up acceleration programme designed by GE Healthcare in partnership with innovation organisation, Wayra UK.
The start-ups all focus on applying AI to augment medical imaging, improve oncology care, and enhance the patient experience.
The announcement comes after estimates show that over 400,000 European lives could be saved annually through the application of AI in healthcare, and could free up 1.8 billion hours of clinicians’ time to focus on what matters most; the patient.
The future of innovation will be about working across silos and collaborating across the healthcare ecosystem, including start-ups, research centres, hospitals, clinicians, and patients
The selected start-ups were chosen as they demonstrated innovative and scalable solutions to pressing problems in the healthcare sector, such as scarcity of diagnostic resources, bottlenecks in care pathways, and limitations in patient input.
The companies which will receive support are:
Legit Health (Bilbao, Spain): Legit Health offers a clinical data and communication tool that helps next-generation dermatologists improve speed to diagnosis, monitor the evolution of wounds, and score severity of chronic and/or malignant skin lesions. This AI-powered technology helps clinicians and patients alike to improve diagnosis.
Spryt (London, UK): SPRYT is a smart scheduling solution that improves uptake/coverage rates for screening services as well as reducing the appointment no-show problem. No-show rates are a significant problem in diagnostic cancer services.
Radiobotics (Copenhagen, Denmark): Radiobotics are automating detection and measurement of features in musculoskeletal imaging to streamline the diagnosis and aid reporting.
Lucida Medical (Cambridge, UK): Lucida uses machine learning and radiogenomics to help identify cancer from MRI and clinical data. It aims to make cancer screening accurate, accessible, cost-effective, and quick.
Vinehealth (London, UK): Vinehealth combines behavioural science and AI to provide highly-personalised patient support that improves the quality of life and survival of cancer patients.
Bruno Moraes, country manager at Wayra, said: “We are proud to welcome some magnificent scale-ups in EMEA for our first cohort of the Edison Accelerator in the region.
“The programme gives our companies unique access to work with leading healthcare corporations to validate their solutions, and then to exploit the business development opportunities that can follow.
“There is no better partner than GE Healthcare to make this happen and I am certain that the Edison Accelerator will become a major player in the HealthTech space in Europe and beyond, and we are excited to help make this happen.”
The Edison Accelerator is bringing together those stakeholders under a single, connected ecosystem to generate a real impact in helping to improve the bottom line and in providing patient care
Jan Beger, senior director of digital ecosystem at GE Healthcare, adds: “The future of innovation will be about working across silos and collaborating across the healthcare ecosystem, including start-ups, research centres, hospitals, clinicians, and patients.
“The Edison Accelerator is bringing together those stakeholders under a single, connected ecosystem to generate a real impact in helping to improve the bottom line and in providing patient care.”
Over the next six months, the Edison Accelerator will provide its cohort with the knowledge and skills to help them further scale their business and co-develop solutions with GE and the other leading healthcare institutions participating in the programme.
Each start-up will be working with a team at GE Healthcare and one of the healthcare partner institutions – Alliance Medical, Ribera Salud, EMRAD and Manchester University.
Intel has also joined the accelerator as a technology partner.
The accelerator will also give the start-ups access to GE Healthcare’s extensive global network, including thousands of sales professionals and distribution partners in 160 countries and will culminate in a Demo Day in November.