Six AI Imaging Startups Join GE Healthcare's Edison Accelerator, Redefining Digital Health Innovation

Recently,Instrument Family learned that six digital health startups from five countries have officially become the first batch of members of the Canadian Edison Accelerator.The Edison Accelerator is a program designed by GE Healthcare and delivered in collaboration with Nex3, aimed at accelerating, validating, and scaling innovative solutions that address significant challenges in the healthcare sector.

The selected companies are all focused on applying artificial intelligence to enhance medical imaging, which is highly likely to transform the way healthcare is delivered. This will enable healthcare systems to provide better care for more people, help improve the experience of healthcare practitioners, and potentially increase productivity and the efficiency of care delivery. It allows them to spend more time directly caring for patients and reduce burnout.

These companies were selected because they demonstrate innovative and scalable solutions to address pressing issues in the healthcare industry."The design of GE Healthcare's Edison Digital Health Platform focuses particularly on hosting innovative applications developed by third parties, and it comes with a rich set of development tools for building and integrating applications. We are beginning to see the application of artificial intelligence in clinical practice, and our goal is to accelerate this process by supporting the most promising innovators and playing an active role in Canada's health technology ecosystem," said Paritosh Dhawale, PhD, General Manager and SVP of GE Healthcare’s Edison Digital Health Platform.

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Edison Accelerator Program Launched Globally

130 years ago, Edison founded GE. Across a century of time, amidst the surging tides of digitalization and artificial intelligence, "Edison" has once again been endowed with new meaning.As early as November 2018, the Edison Accelerator Platform was launched in North America, primarily for use by GE Healthcare's internal data application developers and some strategic partners.GE Edison Accelerator was established in India in 2019 and expanded to Europe in 2021. GE Canada has been selected to launch the program in 2022.

GE Healthcare, the company with the largest installed base globally, has the advantage of "integrating" massive amounts of data as one of Edison's strengths.Edison can effectively integrate diverse data from different business units, suppliers, medical networks, and life science environments worldwide. It enables information sharing across different departments in hospitals, allowing in-hospital application processes to be deeply integrated on the platform before use, thereby breaking down information silos and providing patients with a better experience.

There are more than 140 different intelligent functional module components on the Edison platform, covering a wide range of professional medical development functions.At the same time, Edison also provides many tools and services that support AI software development, developer interfaces, and an app store, enabling developers to quickly complete design, development, management, protection, and distribution, thereby shortening the development process.

On June 24 last year, Legit Health, SPRYT, Lucida, Vinehealth, and four other medical technology startups officially became the first batch of members of the EMEA Edison Accelerator.Edison Accelerator is a healthcare startup and scale-up acceleration program designed in collaboration by GE Healthcare and the innovation organization Wayra UK. The startups are focused on applying artificial intelligence to enhance medical imaging, improve oncology care, and enhance patient experience. This initiative is taking place in Europe.

On March 15 this year, at the HIMSS 2022 conference, Amit Phadnis, Chief Digital Officer of GE Healthcare, stated: "The Edison Digital Health Platform aims to provide healthcare systems with a single platform to host applications and integrate them into clinical workflows. By enabling easy access to care-specific workflows, analytics, and clinical applications across the entire care continuum, clinicians will gain actionable insights to help them better serve patients."

The platform is the first step in building an ecosystem, followed by using applications to make it operational.In China, as early as 2019, GE Healthcare began collaborating with multiple Chinese AI companies to jointly develop imaging-assisted diagnostic applications for diseases.At the 2021 World Artificial Intelligence Conference, GE Healthcare presented the App Store for the AI healthcare industry and launched a one-stop, cross-brand integrated AI platform — the Edison Magic Box. The "Edison Magic Box" platform can achieve:

One deployment, multiple AI applications in the imaging department:

The AI applications provided by "Edison Magic Box" cover multiple fields such as chest nodules, fractures, cardiac, neurology, breast, and liver, along with GE Healthcare's AWS post-processing software. All of these can be implemented through a single platform purchase and installation, saving on redundant hardware and software investments.Installation can be performed either within the department or deployed in the cloud, accessible via web login.

A workflow that integrates AI software from different vendors:

During use, the platform intelligently identifies the patient ID of the current report and provides a connection to the processing results through a unified Edison AI pop-up tool. Doctors can conveniently bring up the results pages of multiple applications with a single click.

One Interface, One Ecological World

"The Edison Magic Box" can provide an online marketplace, offering customers multi-field application introductions and purchase intent submissions. All applications can be centrally purchased through the Edison platform. In this store, applications will continuously be added, updated, and expanded without altering existing workflows. In the future, the Edison AI platform will further extend its services to other departments.

Currently, the partners of the Edison ecosystem include developers of disease imaging algorithms —— Yizhun Intelligence, Shukun Technology, Qianglian Intelligence, And Medical Intelligence, Deepwise Healthcare, Infervision Medical, and Keya Medical; cloud service provider Tencent Cloud; industry organizations that provide development and application standards, the Yangtze River Delta Intelligent Healthcare Development Alliance; and Sinovation Ventures, which has an artificial intelligence engineering institute and pioneered the "technology investment + artificial intelligence" model.

The aforementioned AI developers have integrated with GE Healthcare's advanced imaging equipment, including CT, MR, DSA, and X-ray, on the Edison platform, forming multi-disease solutions such as precise lung screening, precise breast screening, precise stroke diagnosis and treatment, precise coronary artery diagnosis, precise liver imaging, and intelligent fracture analysis.

In collaboration with Shukun TechnologyTaking the cooperation as an example, the two parties jointly developed the first "AI solution for the entire liver cycle based on MRI images," which has made a breakthrough in expanding the application of AI technology in the magnetic resonance field to cover the entire cycle of image reading and auxiliary diagnosis. The chest imaging AI-assisted diagnostic tool co-developed with Yizhun Intelligence; the precise treatment plan for stroke and aneurysms formulated in collaboration with Qianglian Zhichuang; and the one-stop intelligent workflow for cardiac coronary CT scanning and evaluation created in partnership with Deepwise Healthcare.

In the collaboration, the resources provided by GE Healthcare can bring more practical application scenarios and generate more deep learning data. At the same time, GE's strong commercialization capabilities will also be extremely effective in helping medical AI companies.

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Which companies are part of the first group in this plan?

On April 12, GE Healthcare chose to partner with Nex3 to recruit and mentor up to six selected healthcare startups.During the program, the selected startups will showcase their innovative technologies and test their solutions on the Edison Digital Health Platform, which adopts a vendor-agnostic approach to develop and deploy artificial intelligence at scale.

"At Nex3, we believe the best entrepreneurs are evenly distributed around the world," commented Nick Phillips, Program Director of Nex3 Digital Health. "We are thrilled to have the opportunity to collaborate with GE Healthcare, continue to drive the growth of digital health startups, and support the rise of Canadian AI leaders."

He continued, "In fact, this is not the first time we have supported a medical startup in Canada.Nex3 previously collaborated with the Canadian government to support two multi-month programs, helping innovative digital health startups commercialize their technologies in the United States.”

The companies in this program are:

16 Bit Inc

16 Bit is a startup founded by doctors that has developed a computer-aided detection and notification software, designed to utilize routinely acquiredX-rays of the chest, spine, pelvis, knees, or hands, as opportunistic pre-screening devices for low bone density.

Bot Image

Bot Image is a medical device company that has developed a product for post-processing MRI, which uses artificial intelligence (AI) to provide highly accurateProstate Cancer Diagnosis to Help Doctors Interpret Images.The software is provided in the form of a SaaS model and can also be installed behind the client's firewall.

CardioWise

CardioWise is an artificial intelligence cardiac image analysis company, itSimplified the diagnosis of heart disease, using CT data for quantitative diagnostic evaluation of the cardiac system.Cardiac analysis will provide caregivers with next-generation algorithms and data to help doctors make better, more informed patient care decisions.

contextflow

Contextflow develops deep learning-based tools that enable radiologists to complete their daily work faster and with higher quality.And provide comprehensive clinical decision support for lung CT, offering quantitative and qualitative analysis of lung disease patterns and nodules associated with ILD, COPD, and lung cancer.。

corelinesoft

Corelinesoft focuses on artificial intelligence development and provides medical image processing solutions. Its mission is to drive future advancements, enabling any disease to be detected with a simple scan.And provide early screening and prevention--for example, using artificial intelligence to detect nodules that could potentially develop into lung cancer.

US2.ai

Us2.ai is a software startup founded in 2017, supported by Sequoia, Singapore's Agency for Science, Technology and Research (A*STAR), and IHH Healthcare.Through artificial intelligence automatically combating heart disease, the AI-generated report is automatically processed within 2 minutes.

In addition to these six startups,The renowned global medical imaging company Circle Cardiovascular Imaging has begun collaboration., and integrate its AI tool for stroke with GE Healthcare's FastStroke processing platform, is accelerating the integration of its StrokeSENS software with the Edison platform using the Edison accelerator.

In the next three months, these seven companies will test their solutions in the Edison Digital Health Platform, which adopts a vendor-independent approach to developing and deploying large-scale artificial intelligence integrated into clinical workflows. Each company will receive a customized project plan and carefully selected mentors aimed at accelerating integration and commercialization.

"Nex3 has a proven track record in the formation and acceleration of startups, from conception to innovation, from angel to seed, from growth to IPO. This enables us to work with companies at any stage, from the United States, Luxembourg, Singapore, South Korea, Canada, and around the world," said Marlon Evans, CEO of Nex3. "Through our collaboration with GE Healthcare, we are able to accelerate the growth and impact of innovative digital health solutions, addressing critical issues within the healthcare ecosystem."

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Tech Giants Flock to Digital Healthcare

Edison Platform May Change the Industry Game Rules

Currently, information technologies such as 5G, big data, and the Internet of Things are developing rapidly. As an effective solution to address the pain points and challenges in the medical industry, digital healthcare has become a new development trend. Recently (on March 3), Johnson & Johnson Consumer Health China and Tencent jointly announced a comprehensive strategic partnership. The two parties will actively explore the digital application of innovative technologies such as digital therapeutics, artificial intelligence, and cloud computing in the healthcare field, promoting the development and innovation of health management services.

And in January this year, Johnson & Johnson also announced a partnership with Microsoft to advance the development of digital healthcare, further realizing and expanding Johnson & Johnson's medical digital surgery ecosystem.

Baxter Medical stated in 2021 when it acquired Hillrom for $12.5 billion that the deal would help accelerate its digital interconnected care solutions.

Earlier this year, Stryker announced the completion of its acquisition of digital healthcare company Vocera Communications for approximately $3.09 billion, which will significantly complement Stryker's digital healthcare product line.

Moreover, multinational medical device companies such as Philips, Siemens, and Medtronic are also making moves in the digital field; domestically, giants like Mindray and Neusoft have already entered the arena.

One of the current trends in the medical technology industry is companies expanding digital solutions. Although digital innovation progresses slowly in regulated industries such as healthcare,But GE Healthcare is changing the game with the Edison Digital Health Platform, a vendor-agnostic hosting and data aggregation platform with an integrated artificial intelligence engine.

Thanks to digital tools such as advanced analytics and artificial intelligence, healthcare providers will be able to use the platform to deploy applications across the entire care continuum, from screening and diagnosis to disease monitoring and surgery.

As hospitals work to address staffing shortages and clinicians face burnout, this technology design will help tackle the root challenges impacting patient care — integrating artificial intelligence into workflows and assisting doctors in turning data into insights, so they can spend more time with patients and less time on electronic medical records (EMR).

In short, the Edison Digital Health Platform aims to enable healthcare providers to focus on patient-centered care while helping reduce excessive documentation, enhancing data interoperability, and streamlining data overload.

The Senior Vice President and General Manager of GE Healthcare's Edison AI Platform said:"Now, these can be clinical and operational AI-based. By AI, I mean machine learning and deep learning-based, retrospective, predictive, and prescriptive applications. These applications can run on CT, MRI — X-ray, cloud, or ultrasound — or on bedside monitors... or achieve a variety of clinical outcomes in the cloud and data centers."

According to Frost & Sullivan data, calculated by total expenditure in 2019,China is the world's second-largest medical market, with total healthcare expenditure expected to reach 11.6 trillion yuan by 2025.At the same time, the main participants in China's medical market have an urgent need for digital services at every link of the value chain. There is no doubt that the prospect of China's digital medical market is very considerable.

Along with the transformation of the digital healthcare market, this will also greatly change China's healthcare system, such as the way patients are diagnosed and managed, the working methods of doctors and the operational models of hospitals, as well as the supply and usage of pharmaceuticals and medical devices, etc.

In recent years, digital healthcare ecosystems have emerged one after another in the Chinese market.Localization is one of the key advantages emphasized for Edison. As a global company, GE Healthcare deeply explores local pain points in China's medical field through local talent and closely collaborates with local hospitals to develop products.

For example, the Radiology Command Center was entirely developed by GE Healthcare's local team in Shanghai in collaboration with the hospital.In addition, GE Healthcare is expanding its existing application portfolio built on Edison, whose seamless integration into doctors' workflows makes it even more competitive.

Currently, GE Healthcare has developed multiple digital healthcare applications based on the Edison platform, including Asset Cloud管家 (APM), Radiology Command Center solutions, LOGIQ E20 dual-engine ultrasound, CT Smart Subscription, Imaging Protocol and Sequence Management Platform (IPM), and Mural Critical Care Command Center.These digital applications can effectively help China's healthcare improve efficiency, increase medical output, and enhance healthcare accessibility.