Enlitic Secures $15 Million Series B Funding to Advance AI-Powered Medical Imaging Workflow Solutions

VCBeat (WeChat Official Account: vcbeat) has learned that on April 4, medical IT company Enlitic announced the completion of a $15 million Series B financing round. The round was led by Marubeni, with participation from Capitol Health, the lead investor in Enlitic’s Series A round, and several top private investors from Australia. The funds will be primarily used to support the clinical application of the company’s products in the United States, Australia, Japan, Europe, Canada, and Brazil, as well as to secure regulatory approvals.

Enlitic is a San Francisco-based medical IT company that leverages AI technology to streamline radiologists’ medical imaging workflows. Through its proprietary deep learning platform, Enlitic can analyze diverse medical data sources, such as billions of clinical cases, to enhance diagnostic speed and accuracy, thereby accelerating drug research and clinical trials. In 2016, Enlitic was named one of the “50 Smartest Companies” in the world by MIT Technology Review.

Deep learning is a technology inspired by the functioning of the human brain. Enlitic’s deep learning network technology can examine millions of images and automatically identify diseases. Unlike traditional computer-aided diagnosis (CAD), deep learning network technology can simultaneously detect multiple diseases, providing physicians with actionable insights in areas such as early detection, treatment planning, and disease monitoring.

Enlitic’s patient triage technology can interpret medical images within milliseconds, 10,000 times faster than a typical radiologist; its screening technology can assess the malignancy of nodules in chest CT scans more accurately than a panel of radiology experts; its real-time clinical technology can detect minute fractures in X-ray images as small as 0.01%; its heatmap overlay technology draws radiologists’ attention to key findings; and its retrospective analytics solution can rapidly evaluate patients’ historical cases to provide detailed information on their clinical presentation across the care network, thereby helping healthcare institutions conduct clinical trials and drug development.

Enlitic uses deep learning and other forms of AI technology to develop algorithms capable of identifying and analyzing medical images. The company collaborates with hospitals and radiologists worldwide to develop a comprehensive platform that enables the large-scale development, validation, and seamless integration of clinical AI. Early applications of Enlitic’s technology indicate that this comprehensive platform can increase radiologists’ diagnostic speed by more than 20%, while improving the true positive rate and reducing the false positive rate by over 10%.

Enlitic’s first product interprets chest X-rays by detecting and characterizing more than 40 different abnormalities, such as cardiomegaly, pulmonary nodules, and pneumothorax. It is well known that chest radiography is difficult to interpret due to its lack of specificity, yet it remains the most common type of imaging examination, estimated to account for 45% of all studies performed worldwide. Enlitic is collaborating with partners around the world to obtain the necessary approvals for deploying this product in multiple countries and regions, thereby helping radiologists interpret chest X-rays more quickly and accurately.

In January this year, Enlitic launched a new data center featuring a GPU (graphics processing unit) supercluster, accelerating model development by more than tenfold. In February, the company introduced a global testing program, enabling its models to undergo regional adaptation and testing in several countries simultaneously. At this pace, Enlitic expects to be able to interpret 95% of X-ray types by the end of 2019, and 95% of common CT and MRI scans by 2021.

Enlitic CEO Kevin Lyman stated, “This financing round represents a significant step toward alleviating radiologists’ workload and improving patient outcomes. We are deeply grateful for the support of partners such as Marubeni and Capitol Health, and we look forward to continuing our collaboration to jointly explore meaningful diagnostic solutions.”

Dr. Anthony Upton, Chief Medical Officer of Enlitic, commented, “The completion of the Series B financing will enable Enlitic to scale up production and achieve AI model coverage for the entire body, which will have a significant impact on daily clinical workflows.”

Marubeni is a major Japanese general trading and investment conglomerate with 12 business divisions. Marubeni will engage in global collaborations with technology-driven healthcare solution providers and medical partners, committing to the establishment of a digital health platform to deliver comprehensive prevention and diagnostic services powered by AI technology.

Capitol Health is a leading provider of diagnostic imaging and related services to the Australian healthcare market. Headquartered in Melbourne, Victoria, the company owns and operates clinics across Victoria. Its business focus is on delivering community-based infrastructure for radiologists and allied health professionals, thereby enabling efficient and accurate medical service outcomes for patients.

(Compiled by: Li Chengping)