Medica partners with global AI company

Teleradiology services provider Medica Group has partnered with Qure.ai to develop AI tools for prioritisation and improved efficiency of radiology scan workload.

Under the terms of the agreement, Medica will partner with Qure.ai in two important areas.

The first is to launch a decision support tool for CT (computed tomography) head scan examinations.

This tool will flag potential urgent examinations allowing prioritisation of reporting based on clinical priority as opposed to chronological allocation.

The tool will also highlight potentially critical findings to reporters, which can be integrated into their diagnoses.

It will be trialed and implemented to augment Medica’s urgent, out-of-hours NightHawk service.

The second area is to co-develop an AI-based automated workflow improvement tool that aims to improve the efficiency of study allocation from NHS clients to Medica’s network of more than 435 reporters.

‘Medica has been actively following the development of decision support tools using artificial intelligence to better understand the benefit to our clients,’ said Stuart Quin, chief executive officer of Medica. ‘As we indicated in September 2019, our focus has been on areas that can have an immediate improvement to workflow and can support clinical decision making.’

‘As a leader in artificial intelligence solutions for radiology with an impressive track record of successful deployment in teleradiology workflows, backed up by peer-reviewed studies, Qure.ai is an ideal partner,’ Quin added.

Prashant Warier, chief executive officer of Qure.ai, said the tools being developed for Medica will improve efficiencies and support its network of radiologists and radiographers.

Founded in 2016 and headquartered in Mumbai, India, with US operations in San Francisco and New York, Qure.ai is an artificial intelligence solutions company for radiology.

In a Trading Update on 23 March, Medica said it was hard to predict the impact of Covid-19 on the business but early signs indicated a 30% reduction in demand for its NightHawk service. The company said it was also complying with the Financial Conduct Authority’s request to delay forthcoming announcements of preliminary statements of annual results.