BioMind AI Resurges with Breakthrough Stroke Platform iStroke Ahead of IPO Filing

Armed with groundbreaking research findings published in top-tier international journals, BioMind, a leading medical AI company that had once faded from the spotlight, has thus returned to public view.

At the recently held 10th Academic Annual Conference of the Chinese Stroke Association and the Tiantan International Stroke Conference (CSA & TISC) 2024, major research findings from Professor Wang Yongjun’s team at Beijing Tiantan Hospital were announced. The study, published in the prestigious New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM), demonstrated that for patients with large vessel occlusion ischemic stroke in the extended time window (4.5–24 hours), if the iStroke acute stroke intelligent imaging decision platform identifies salvageable penumbra through perfusion imaging, tenecteplase (TNK) thrombolysis is safe and can reduce disability rates and significantly improve patient outcomes when mechanical thrombectomy is not available.

Upon its release, this research achievement quickly attracted widespread attention from major media outlets such as People’s Daily and Xinhua News Agency. Related reports described it as a clinical study capable of transforming stroke treatment guidelines. The iStroke system mentioned in the findings is a product of BioMind.

In early 2022, news of BioMind’s broken capital chain spread throughout the industry.

At that time, the field of medical imaging AI was at its peak. Less than six months had passed since Airdoc became the first publicly listed medical AI company in China. It was rumored that companies such as Shukun Technology, Infervision, and Deepwise had also secured hundreds of millions in funding, preparing for their final push toward an initial public offering.

Holding China’s first Class III medical device certificate for “AI-assisted imaging diagnosis” and maintaining close collaborations with top-tier domestic medical institutions, BioMind once reached a valuation exceeding $500 million.

Previously, as the sole medical AI participant, BioMind secured the only national-level public platform project for medical artificial intelligence awarded by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology. At that time, BioMind was in a phase of rapid development, with a steady stream of visiting investment firms and no signs whatsoever of abnormal business operations.

However, some signs suggest that BioMind was indeed encountering certain issues at the time.

That year, during the Dragon Boat Festival, the company’s official WeChat account pushed a holiday greeting as usual, followed by complete silence.

The root cause of the crisis stems from an investment agreement signed during previous financing rounds.

At that time, BioMind had no shortage of investors from top-tier institutions waiting to come on board; however, due to equity disputes and the issue of shareholders’ unilateral veto rights, the company was unable to complete its financing for an extended period.

Ultimately, BioMind is not unable to secure funding; it is incapable of doing so.

In July 2023, the Beijing No. 1 Intermediate People's Court received an application for bankruptcy reorganization filed by the company's creditors.

During the restructuring process, Liang Weimin has been striving to resolve the issue of investors’ “veto rights” and the legacy problems arising from the unwinding of the company’s VIE structure. Meanwhile, the primary focus has been on safeguarding the company’s R&D capabilities.

“After the capital chain broke, the departments most affected were product, R&D, marketing, and sales. We did not force employees who wanted to leave to stay, but we made every effort to retain our R&D team,” Liang Weimin told VCBeat.

“At that time, every penny had to be spent where it mattered most. Previously, BioMind, together with Huawei, China Mobile, the Chinese PLA General Hospital (301 Hospital), Beijing Tiantan Hospital, Peking University First Hospital, Beijing Tongren Hospital, Peking University Cancer Hospital, the First Affiliated Hospital of Zhengzhou University, and the National Institutes for Food and Drug Control, successfully won the bid for the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology’s ‘Public Service Platform for AI-Assisted Diagnosis in the Healthcare Industry’ project. Conditions were extremely challenging back then, with severe shortages of both personnel and funding. Nevertheless, we completed the project with high quality and quantity, and it successfully passed the acceptance review by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology on October 29, 2023.”

Furthermore, BioMind has maintained its strong focus on AI research and development in the field of neurological disorders. During this period, BioMind continued to conduct large-cohort clinical studies for its iStroke, an intelligent imaging decision-support platform for acute stroke. Results from one large cohort were obtained in June 2023, while the other was fully completed in October.

So, where does the funding for R&D investment come from?

“I borrowed money—a lot of it,” said Liang Weimin. A response that sounded casual but was, in fact, difficult to give.

I asked him, “Why would you rather go into debt than stop developing the product?”

He said, “I believe in the value of our product. If BioMind were to cease operations, this product would disappear, and its social value would go unrealized. I do not want to let down the patients who are waiting for diagnosis and treatment.”

In October 2023, the name BioMind once again appeared on the internet.

Medical IT listed company Goodwill (Jiahe Meikang) issued a public announcement stating that it had reviewed and approved the "Proposal on Participating in the Bankruptcy Reorganization of Beijing BioMind Technology Co., Ltd." Subsequently, Goodwill agreed to have its subsidiary, Jiahe Information, invest RMB 100 million in BioMind’s bankruptcy reorganization.

With additional capital injections from other shareholders, BioMind ultimately secured RMB 150 million in funding, achieved a 100% repayment rate to creditors, and restructured its corporate governance framework.

After Two Years of Silence, BioMind Has Made a Comeback.

The most recent announcement of the company’s achievements was made at the 10th Academic Annual Conference of the Chinese Stroke Association and the Tiantan International Stroke Conference (CSA & TISC), held recently in 2024.

During the conference, the internationally authoritative medical journal The New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) published a landmark article by Wang Yongjun’s team from Beijing Tiantan Hospital on the use of the domestically produced thrombolytic drug tenecteplase for the treatment of ischemic stroke.

This marks the first time that The New England Journal of Medicine, a premier journal in the medical field, has simultaneously released research findings with a Chinese academic conference. According to the study results, aided by the iStroke intelligent imaging decision-making platform for acute stroke, the time window for intravenous thrombolysis with tenecteplase (TNK) can be extended from the original 4.5 hours to 24 hours.

“This is the first time in the world that it has been confirmed that extending the time window for intravenous thrombolysis to within 24 hours is safe and effective.” Xiong Yunyun, Executive Leader of the TRACE III Research Team and Deputy Director of the Cerebrovascular Disease Department at the Neurology Center of Beijing Tiantan Hospital, introduced that among stroke patients worldwide, a significant proportion are those with large vessel occlusion who present within 24 hours of symptom onset and have salvageable brain tissue but cannot undergo endovascular treatment for various reasons.

Currently, the golden time window for intravenous thrombolysis is 4.5 hours. In other words, once the “4.5-hour golden window for thrombolysis” is exceeded, patients will miss the optimal opportunity for treatment due to delays, leading to a high risk of disability or even death.

Driven by clinical and patient needs, this was the original intent behind the study design of the large-scale TRACE III clinical trial. Furthermore, to enable more timely and accurate imaging assessments, the TRACE III study incorporated artificial intelligence technology. Serving as an “assistant,” iStroke can rapidly analyze and evaluate head images to precisely identify the critical “penumbra.”

Recently, this study has revised the "golden time window," providing the first global evidence that extending the time window for intravenous thrombolysis to 24 hours remains safe and effective. The study, which covered 103 hospitals across China and included 516 patients, yielded positive results: after assessment using iStroke, TNK thrombolysis was shown to improve the rate of non-disabling outcomes in these patients (33.0% vs. 24.2%), with no significant difference in mortality rates.

This provides a “Chinese solution” for the treatment of patients with acute stroke, holds promise for rewriting clinical practice guidelines, and will bring significant benefits to countless patients.

NEJM Concurrent Commentary: “The results of the TRACE-III trial represent an exciting advance in the diagnosis and treatment of acute stroke, with profound implications for global medical practice.”

Meanwhile, this study holds equally significant implications for patients who are not immediate candidates for mechanical thrombectomy.

Globally, access to mechanical thrombectomy remains limited. Today, even medical institutions without thrombectomy capabilities can leverage the iStroke intelligent imaging decision-support platform for acute stroke to perform rapid, automated assessments of patients presenting beyond the standard therapeutic time window. If the AI determines that a patient meets the criteria for thrombolysis, physicians can promptly and precisely administer thrombolytic therapy, thereby helping a large number of stroke patients avoid the devastating outcomes of disability or death.

The iStroke intelligent imaging decision-making platform for acute stroke, which plays a key diagnostic role, is the AI product that BioMind continued to develop even by borrowing money during its most difficult period.

The role that iStroke can play offers a glimpse into the clinical value that Liang Weimin has steadfastly upheld.

It deeply integrates the expertise of top specialists from Tiantan Hospital with artificial intelligence technology to deliver a one-stop solution for efficient, high-quality diagnosis of acute cerebral infarction: reducing routine analysis time from over 15 minutes to just 3 minutes, rapidly identifying stroke subtypes, predicting early hematoma expansion, and providing decision support for thrombolysis and thrombectomy both within and beyond the therapeutic time window. This empowers physicians to deliver rapid, high-quality care, ultimately maximizing patient benefits.

In addition to advancing cutting-edge research and completing its pipeline for neurological disorders, BioMind has also kept pace.

Taking its Clinical Smart Management System for Secondary Prevention of Cerebrovascular Diseases Based on Digital Healthcare (CMDSS) as an example, this product underwent a large-cohort clinical validation study conducted by Beijing Tiantan Hospital in 2019. The study enrolled more than 20,000 Chinese patients across over 80 hospitals. The validated results demonstrated a 25.6% relative reduction in the recurrence rate of new cardiovascular events within 90 days (3 months) after discharge.

In clinical practice, CMDSS assists physicians in etiologic subtyping of ischemic stroke (CISS) tailored to Chinese patients, supports personalized decision-making for acute-phase management and secondary prevention, and enables real-time quality control and improvement. The management protocols are individually customized by experts from Beijing Tiantan Hospital based on the latest guidelines and clinical trial results.

As a medical AI enterprise that has long been in the first tier, BioMind continues to expand its layout from diagnosis to the entire process of diagnosis and treatment, further exploring the clinical value of AI.

According to Liang Weimin, BioMind is developing an intelligent neurosurgical surgical planning system targeting specific tumors such as gliomas.

Compared with other organs in the body, the cerebral vasculature is more complex, and surgical risks are higher. Therefore, if AI can assist surgeons in comprehensive preoperative planning and help intraoperatively to determine the tumor resection pathway and assess whether the tumor margins have been completely and neatly resected, it will effectively reduce surgical trauma and postoperative tumor recurrence rates.

Jiahe Meikang’s equity investment in BioMind represents a strategic alliance between two industry leaders. In the future, BioMind’s intelligent medical imaging analysis products are expected to integrate with Jiahe Meikang’s specialty-specific electronic medical records (EMR), thereby strengthening the latter’s competitive moat. Meanwhile, Jiahe Meikang’s extensive experience in clinical informatics over the years may also help BioMind enhance the clinical service capabilities of its intelligent medical imaging analysis products.

In terms of product line diversity, BioMind has fallen somewhat behind after nearly two years of stagnation. Yet this may well be a blessing in disguise, reinforcing BioMind’s conviction about what truly constitutes the core value of medical AI.

Gratifyingly, after weathering countless challenges, BioMind has remained steadfast in its core convictions and made a strong comeback.

The idealistic era of solely pursuing AI-driven technological transformation is long gone; only enterprises that deeply understand and firmly grasp clinical value can secure a stable foothold in today’s fiercely competitive market.