UK startup Re:course AI has announced a seed investment round of $4.3m led by Par Equity to develop an artificial intelligence platform that can reimagine healthcare training.
The platform will use conversational AI and avatars and aims to address the challenges around training for medical professionals as well as delivering continuous learning to ultimately help improve patient experiences and outcomes.
Aidan MacMillan, senior investment manager at Par Equity, said: “Re:course AI has the potential to disrupt how the healthcare professionals of the future are trained, as the demand for virtual AI-based training is growing.
“The medical and AI capability within Re:course AI has enabled a unique approach to training for healthcare and life sciences professionals which can handle a wide variety of real world scenarios.”
The platform will provide a new approach to training for medical professionals, with virtual training exercises that deliver realistic patient interactions and automatic feedback.
Re:course AI’s platform will provide both capacity and scalability at a time when practitioners are time-poor. It has already been integrated into healthcare institutions in the UK and the US to develop the skills of doctors and nurses.
Early evaluation of the technology has shown it can improve the performance of clinicians during patient encounters in role-playing exercises.
Dr. Scott Martin, CEO and co-founder of Re:course AI, said: “We believe AI will augment, not replace, the healthcare workforce of the future and we have already demonstrated in our customer implementations that Re:course AI can be the flight simulator for medical training.
“We are delighted to receive the backing of our investors, as we are keen to expand our team to respond to growing global demand for our digital human platform.”
The company has already received $1.2m from NHS England SBRI Healthcare for cutting-edge simulations to develop critical communication and decision-making skills in healthcare professionals. It is also conducting a pilot with primary care clinicians within the NHS in South Yorkshire.
This week University Alliance showed its support for simulations in nursing training, following on from the Nursing and Midwifery Council approved changes to pre-registrations education programme standards which would see simulations run for 600 of the 2,300 practice learning hours required by medical students.