NovaUCD-based health tech start-up xWave Technologies and CeADAR, Ireland's centre for applied artificial intelligence, have announced the commencement of an innovation partnership project using AI to predict the best medical diagnostic test for a patient based on input data.
xWave said that medical diagnostics as a field is "fraught with problems", and that timely and accurate diagnosis is required to give patients the best health outcomes possible.
It is estimated that up to 50% of radiology scans are unnecessary and of no benefit to patients, and such waste can result in long waiting lists, poor patient outcomes such as delayed and missed diagnoses and unnecessary radiation exposure, and undue costs.
xWave provides a clinical decision support platform to assist clinicians in selecting the most appropriate tests for their patients, and the company said that advancements in AI provide a "significant opportunity" to bring a more data-driven approach in diagnostics.
Making diagnostic referring more predictive and personalised to patients' needs will be the focus of the xWave-CeADAR project, which is funded by Enterprise Ireland.
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"It is estimated that 30% of the world’s data is being generated by healthcare alone," Mitchell O'Gorman, CEO of xWave Technologies, said. "xWave and CeADAR have identified a way to use artificial intelligence and machine learning to unlock some of this data to ensure that patients are getting referred for the best test for them, not only taking into account their medical history but also their lifestyle, seasonal, geographic, demographic and social factors that can have a significant impact on health outcomes.”
He added: “This research will support the development of the next generation of clinical decision support systems, delivering hyper-personalised recommendations to achieve xWave’s mission of ensuring that patients get the best test first.”
Ricardo Simon Carbajo, head of innovation and development at CeADAR, said: “With approximately 80% of health data being available in unstructured format, text and video, the use of machine learning (AI) techniques to analyse and learn from healthcare data is becoming a necessity.
"This project will employ the latest research in natural language processing and understanding to extract, label and analyse healthcare data to provide greater personalisation and prediction for patients.”
“Innovation partnership projects such as this project are designed to leverage CeADAR's expertise as Ireland's Digital Innovation Hub in AI, to bring the latest technology to companies. We are very excited to partner with xWave Technologies to leverage this advanced technology with a view to improving patient outcomes.”
Leo Clancy, CEO of Enterprise Ireland, added: “Irish innovators are playing transformative roles in shaping the future of healthcare, by using digital solutions to improve patient outcomes.
"This Enterprise Ireland-funded innovation partnership between xWave Technologies and CeADAR is an example of this ecosystem we are proud to foster, supporting high-potential start-ups and academia to collaborate on solving global problems through advanced technology, and I wish them every success.”
The innovation partnership project between xWave and CeADAR has been facilitated through UCD’s knowledge transfer team at NovaUCD. The announcement coincides with the National Digital Health Innovation Conference, organised by HSE Digital Transformation.
Photo: Ricardo Simon Carbajo (left), Head of Innovation and Development, CeADAR, Leo Clancy, CEO, Enterprise Ireland and Mitchell O’Gorman, CEO, xWave Technologies. (Pic: Nick Bradshaw Fotonic)
