An artificial intelligence driven app which aims to provide a ‘doctor in your pocket’ has announced it has received £35 million funding from a number of private investors.
Ada Health launched in 2016 with the aim of offering new levels of personalised care and treatment by combining artificial intelligence (AI) with the medical insights of doctors.
The app works by asking relevant, personalised questions based on the information provided and suggesting possible causes for symptoms and helps users to make informed decisions about their health.
The company has now announced it has received £35m in funding from a number of private investors.
Daniel Nathrath, CEO and co-founder of Ada Health told Digital Health News that he describes the app as a ‘doctor in your pocket’
He also explained that he hopes one of the investors, William Tunstall-Pedoe who was the AI entrepreneur behind Amazon’s Alexa model, will be able to help Ada Health have the capacity to respond to people’s voices instead of having to type out questions.
“Another example of what the funding will go towards is expanding the number of languages we have,” Nathrath said.
“We have lots of requests from people asking for Ada in their own language and in 2018 we are looking to launch the app in two more languages.”
“I think the main thing is that the funding will allow us to keep improving the core product and there is always room for improvement.”
“We’ve seen incredible traction since launch, receiving countless messages each day about how we’ve helped someone identify an important health issue and get to the right next step in their care.”
“This is just the beginning, and we’re excited to enable even more people around the world to effectively manage their health.”
While no fixed targets have been set with the funding, Nathrath added that the mutual goal was to give as many people as possible access to Ada Health.
Global investment group, Access Industries which invests in highly promising and transformative companies was one of the main contributors.
“Ada is one of the most exciting companies we’ve seen cutting across health and artificial intelligence,” said Guillaume d’Hauteville, vice chairman of Access Industries.
“They’ve developed a unique and highly effective health management solution driven by a team with deep medical and AI expertise and years of technology development.”
“Ada is setting a new standard for health management, and we look forward to partnering with them on this next stage of their journey.”
NHS England recently announced it has launched a £45 million fund to help GP surgeries implement online consultation programmes.
The money will be used to implement an online consultation programme for three years across a number of GP practices.
25 November 2017 @ 14:43
“The app works by asking relevant, personalised questions based on the information provided and suggesting possible causes for symptoms and helps users to make informed decisions about their health.”
The latter might be useful, but as for the former, I’m not sure.
Can it prescribe, request test, or make referrals?
I suppose it would help by weeding out the patients who DON’T need to see a doctor, though. Perhaps even direct towards another agency eg pharmacist.
The issue that’s not being addressed [though it is for driverless cars] is liability.
Who carries the can if the app misses something serious, and diverts the patient to the health-food shop, and in consequence the patient suffers harm?