The UK Department of Health and Social Care announced that Qure.ai has been selected as one of the winners of the Artificial Intelligence in Health and Care Award, sponsored by the UK government. Qure.ai is a 5-year-old Sequoia-funded company builds Artificial Intelligence (AI) powered solutions to facilitate identification and treatment of stroke and head injuries. The Award has been instituted by the Accelerated Access Collaborative (AAC) in partnership with NHSX and the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR). The consortium is making £140 million available over four years in funding and support for promising AI technologies.
The award will drive Qure.ai’s mission to gather real-world evidence for its qER tool in an ER setting, in partnership with the NHS Guy’s and St. Thomas’ Foundation Trust, NHS King’s College Hospital Foundation Trust, NHS Northumbria Healthcare Foundation Trust and other key Major Trauma focused NHS trusts across the country.
qER is Qure.ai’s AI platform that identifies a range of critical abnormalities on head CT scans, such as bleeds, strokes and fractures. The technology is CE-marked and received United States FDA clearance in 2020. qER will now be deployed in Accident and Emergency (A&E) departments in the UK to improve diagnostic turn-around times for these critical conditions and help reduce missed diagnoses.
The NHS has seen a significant rise in A&E footfalls as well as growing volumes and complexity of imaging, with CT and MRI volumes increasing by an average of 10% (over half a million scans) per year1, while patient wait times in the A&E have been steadily increasing too. For better patient outcomes, the time to diagnosis and treatment is critical, particularly for patients with neuro presentations such as head trauma or stroke.
Dr. Haris Shuaib, Consultant Physicist, Head of Clinical Scientific Computing at Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust said, “Our out-of-hours radiology reporting service would benefit greatly from an effective triaging and prioritisation system. With the qER system from Qure we hope to be able to manage critical findings like intracranial hemorrhage even more effectively.”
Dr Hugh Harvey, Managing Director, Hardian Health- “Winning a Phase 3 AAC award is a testimony to the strong consortium that has come together to support deployment and scaling of Qure’s market-leading qER software. Hardian Health is truly excited to be part of this fantastic consortium. We will be conducting cost-effectiveness analysis of the care pathways by involving all stakeholders, from NHS clinicians to patient advocacy groups”.
“We are excited about this Award from NHSX”, says Dr. Pooja Rao, R&D Head and co-founder of Qure.ai. “This NHSX grant will help us demonstrate that appropriate use of AI technology leads to better patient outcomes and accrues economic benefits to the NHS system. It paves the way for wider adoption of Qure’s technology in the UK”.
