Hong Kong-based Horizons Ventures has led a $129 million Series B fundraising round for healthcare artificial intelligence (AI) company harrison.ai.
The raising is one of the largest Series B rounds ever raised for an Australian start-up.
Horizons, which invests globally, was an existing investor in harrison.ai. The round was supported by existing investors Blackbird Ventures and Skip Capital plus new investors medical diagnostics company Sonic Healthcare (ASX: SHL) and I-MED Radiology Network, which is an investee of major European private equity firm Permira.
Sydney-based harrison.ai, which was founded just three years ago, has now raised a total of $158 million over two years. Blackbird Ventures led Harrison.ai’s $29 million Series A funding round in late 2019.
The company plans to use the latest cash injection to accelerate its mission of scaling up critical capacity across healthcare systems globally through commercialisation of a wide range of clinical applications for artificial intelligence (AI) applications.
Alongside announcing the capital raise, harrison.ai revealed a new partnership with medical diagnostics company Sonic Healthcare to co-develop and commercialise new clinical AI technology applications in pathology. The target of the joint venture is to develop pathology diagnosis support applications that will increase accuracy and efficiency.
Harrison.ai plans to rapidly expand its team of AI data scientists and engineers while expanding into new areas of healthcare with additional global clinical partners. The company anticipates that support from global investors like Horizons Ventures, along with strategic clinical investors, will enable it to leverage medical expertise internationally to extend the reach of its technologies.
Harrison.ai notes that capacity in many areas of clinical diagnosis is under pressure due to increases in healthcare demand, skills shortages and pandemic-related backlogs. Numbers of skilled radiologists and specialist doctors are inadequate in developed countries such as the UK and the US but their health systems are massively better served than those in many developing countries. The US has around 11 radiologists per 100,000 people while in Kenya the figure is just 0.35. The use of AI to aid diagnostic work has great potential to reduce the effects of such disparities.
Harrison.ai claims that work it has done with partners to date has pioneered a unique, proven model to develop, commercialise and deploy accurate and clinically effective AI tools that, when combined with clinical expertise and data of medical partners, will significantly shorten the path to market for new healthcare AI applications.
Harrison.ai partnered with I-MED Radiology in early 2020 to develop AI assistance for radiology processes. The company says the partnership’s first product, analise.ai, is the world’s most comprehensive AI clinical decision-support technology for chest X-rays – it can detect 124 specific anomalies – and is already in daily use by more than 350 radiologists in Australia.
Harrison.ai chief executive and co-founder Dr Aengus Tran said: “Delivering equitable, effective and accurate healthcare to more people is a critical part of our mission at harrison.ai. and, as we emerge from the pandemic, that mission is more important than ever. With our model and methodology now proven across multiple clinical areas, we are in a position to expand to new clinical areas.”
Horizons Ventures investor Chris Liu said: “Harrison.ai’s distinct approach to AI healthcare has enabled the team to commercialise market-leading solutions at record pace with its partners. We look forward to working closely with the team and our partners to help augment the capacity of healthcare systems globally.”
Sonic Healthcare chief executive Dr Colin Goldschmidt said he expected the partnership with Harrison.ai to create a powerful force in healthcare AI.
Harrison.ai was founded by Aengus Tran, a medical doctor, and his brother Dimitry, a medical technologist. Their first AI technology, IVY, was developed in partnership with IVF company Virtus Health (ASX: VRT) to help embryologists select the most viable embryos for in-vitro fertilisation. IVY has reduced to time to pregnancy for thousands of parents.
Image: Harrison.ai chief executive Dr Aengus Tran demonstrating the company’s IVY technology.