Applying AI to Radiology to drive ultra accurate disease detection at scale: Why we invested in Quibim

We are excited to announce our recent investment in Quibim, a Digital Health startup from Valencia that provides a quantitative radiology solution for doctors and researchers. We were joined in the €8m fundraising round by Amadeus Capital Partners (co-lead), Apex Ventures, Partech and Crista Galli Ventures.

Quibim’s proprietary software extracts and quantifies disease-specific biomarkers from medical images with ultra-high accuracy to help with clinical diagnosis, treatment and follow-up of patients.

We are delighted to partner with Angel Alberich-Bayarri (CEO, MIT Innovator Under 35, phD Biomedical Engineering) and his team as they double down on product development and accelerate their international expansion.

AI improves Radiologists’ efficiency and accuracy

Radiology has traditionally depended on finite resources: trained physicians visually assessed medical images for the detection, characterization and monitoring of diseases. As such there is a capacity restraint, being the number of Radiologists and number of images they can process, as well as an accuracy constraint due to the human element.

AI methods excel at automatically recognizing complex patterns in imaging data and providing quantitative, rather than qualitative, assessments of radiographic characteristics. AI provides greater accuracy, reduces treatment variability and improves care processes.

Radiologists are more necessary than ever and their role will continue to grow but it is very necessary for them to adopt new technologies in order to increase their efficiency. Technology will enable existing workflows and processes to scale.

The time is now; infrastructure is cheaper, faster

In recent years, GPUs (graphics-processing units), data storage and other IT infrastructure technologies have become cheaper, faster, more accessible and more powerful. As in other industries, modern medicine is primed for massive adoption of AI technologies.

Quibim’s platform is full-body, deployed globally

Quibim’s platform is built by Radiologists for Radiologists. Unlike its’ competitors, Quibim provides a solution for full body radionomics, with more than 20 algorithms for a range of conditions including cancer, Alzheimer’s, osteoarthritis, liver disease and most recently COVID-19. This unified approach is valued by Radiologists, and its products are already used in over 70 hospitals and 11 clinical trials across the world.

Our first Digital Health investment: The data challenge

We’ve been investing in innovative B2B solutions for over 15 years now but our investment in Quibim marks our first in Digital Health. Whilst the application may be new, we believe there is a massive market opportunity to bring enterprise technology to modern medicine. The healthcare industry is at the centre of a data revolution as it demands to improve efficiency and reduce costs, while continuing to deliver the highest quality patient care and medical research. We are excited by this challenge and look forward to partnering with more entrepreneurs in this space.