Reading, 17 February 2020: Healthtech startup IgniteData has secured new funding to complete a £500,000 project, as part of Innovate UK’s Smart Grants programme.
The funding will be invested into further developing the AI capabilities of Archer, IgniteData’s digital-health SaaS platform that reduces the need for manual data entry in clinical trials. Having worked with structured data for the last year and a half, this additional grant allows IgniteData to begin unlocking the much greater value that lies in the 70% of the health record in unstructured format.
This latest IgniteData funding takes the total amount of UK government investment in the business to over £1m in the last 18 months. Through its Smart programme, Innovate UK, part of UK Research and Innovation, is investing up to £25 million in game-changing innovative or disruptive ideas.
Underpinned by SMART on FHIR, the new investment sees IgniteData utilise NLP (Natural-Language-Processing) to pull out structured data. This will allow for more intuitive and responsive management of EDCs within the platform, opening up the untapped potential of secondary-care EHR data.
Dan Hydes, co-founder and CEO of IgniteData comments, “This next round of Innovate UK funding is a huge endorsement of everything we are achieving with Archer. For us, it’s always been about how we accelerate a major step-change in the speed, efficiency and affordability of clinical studies.”
He adds, “This grant means we can continue to transform the interoperability of EHR and EDC systems, specifically now by beginning to unlock the value that lies within the larger realm of unstructured data – where the greatest challenge lies. It’s essential the UK stays competitive as a digihealth player and we welcome this investment in healthtech right now.”
