GE Healthcare in collaboration with Nex Cubed select six digital health start-ups for inaugural Edison Accelerator in Canada

Toronto, Canada, Aug. 09, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Six digital health start-ups from five countries have officially become the first cohort of the Edison Accelerator in Canada – a program designed by GE Healthcare and delivered in collaboration with Nex Cubed to accelerate, validate, and scale innovative solutions that address important challenges in the healthcare sector.

The selected companies all focus on applying Artificial Intelligence (AI) to augment medical imaging with the potential to transform how healthcare is delivered. AI is poised to increase productivity and the efficiency of care delivery and allow healthcare systems to provide better care to more people. AI can help improve the experience of healthcare practitioners, with the goal of enabling them to spend more time in direct patient care and reducing burnout.

The selected companies were chosen as they demonstrated innovative and scalable solutions to pressing problems in the healthcare sector. “GE’s Edison Digital Health Platform is designed with specific focus on hosting applications developed by innovative third parties. It comes with a rich set of development tools to build and integrate applications. We are starting to see the use of AI in clinical practice and our goal is to accelerate this by supporting the most promising innovators and playing an active role in the Canadian health tech ecosystem.” said Paritosh Dhawale, PhD, SVP and GM, Edison Digital Health Platform at GE Healthcare. The companies in the program are:

• 16 Bit Inc : 16 Bit is a physician-founded startup that created a computer-aided detection and notification software that is intended to function as an opportunistic prescreening device for low bone mineral density using routinely acquired x-rays of the chest, spine, pelvis, knee or hand. 
• Bot Image : Bot Image is a medical device company that created a product for post-processing MRI that is using artificial intelligence (AI) to aid physicians in image interpretation by providing highly accurate prostate cancer diagnostics. The software is provided as a SaaS model or can be installed behind the client’s firewall.
• CardioWise: CardioWise is an AI cardiac image analysis company that simplifies the diagnosis of heart disease enabling a quantitative diagnostic evaluation of the heart system using CT data. CardioWise analysis will provide caregivers with next generation algorithms and data to help physicians to make better more informed decisions about patient care.
• contextflow  : contextflow develops deep learning-based tools to enable radiologists to complete their daily workload faster and with higher quality and offers comprehensive clinical decision support for lung CT, providing quantitative and qualitative analysis of lung disease patterns and nodules related to ILD, COPD and lung cancer.
• corelinesoft : corelinesoft specializes in AI development that provides medical image processing solutions with a mission to drive for a future where one simple scan can reveal any ailment and provide for early screening and prevention – for example utilizing AI to detect nodules that have the possibility of progressing into lung cancer.
• US2.ai : Us2.ai is a software start-up founded in 2017 and backed by Sequoia; Singapore's Agency for Science, Technology and Research; and IHH Healthcare that automates the fight against heart disease through AI with AI-structured reports processed automatically in under 2 minutes.

“We are honored to have this exceptional group of companies on board our first Canadian Edison accelerator. Each of our finalists are solving real problems in medical imaging and we look forward to working with them over the coming months,” said Matthew Khoory, Senior Director – Solutions and Digital Development, GE Healthcare Canada.

As such, in addition to the six startups, Circle Cardiovascular Imaging, a prominent global medical imaging company, who is already collaborating and has integrated its stroke-focused AI-based tools with GE Healthcare’s FastStroke processing platform, is leveraging the Edison Accelerator to accelerate the integration of its StrokeSENS software with the Edison Platform.

Over the next three months, the seven companies will test their solution within the Edison Digital Health Platform, which takes a vendor-agnostic approach to developing and deploying Artificial Intelligence at scale integrated within the clinical workflow. Each company will get a customized program plan and hand-picked mentors with the aim to accelerate integration and commercialization.

“Nex Cubed has a successful heritage of startup formation and acceleration for companies ranging from ideation to innovation, angel to seed, and growth to IPO. This enables us to work with companies at any stage, across the globe from the USA, Luxembourg, Singapore, Korea, Canada and beyond,” said Marlon Evans, CEO at Nex Cubed. “Through our collaboration with GE Healthcare, we are able to accelerate the growth and impact of innovative digital health solutions tackling critical issues within the healthcare ecosystem.”

The program culminates with an Innovation Showcase during which all participants will present to a network of investors, potential business partners and customers, who could help take their companies to the next level. Subject to applicable regulatory authorizations, successful applications may have the opportunity to be distributed through the GE Healthcare Marketplace after culmination of relevant steps that include commercial distribution agreements. GE Healthcare Marketplace is GE Healthcare’s online store that allows customers to find and buy applications from a range of third-party developers that can be integrated within their clinical and operational workflows to help healthcare providers improve patient care.

About GE Healthcare:

GE Healthcare is the $17.7 billion healthcare business of GE (NYSE: GE). As a leading global medical technology, pharmaceutical diagnostics and digital solutions innovator, GE Healthcare enables clinicians to make faster, more informed decisions through intelligent devices, data analytics, applications and services, supported by its Edison intelligence platform. With over 100 years of healthcare industry experience and around 48,000 employees globally, the company operates at the center of an ecosystem working toward precision health, digitizing healthcare, helping drive productivity and improve outcomes for patients, providers, health systems and researchers around the world.

About Nex Cubed:

Nex Cubed is an investor and innovation partner that empowers startups, investors, corporates, academia, and governments to bring new technologies to market, helps rising companies scale, and provides paths to liquidity - the power of three. Over the last 5 years, Nex Cubed has established itself as a leader in corporate innovation and startup acceleration, creating a global ecosystem of 3 industry-specific COEs (Frontier Tech, Digital Health, and FinTech), 81 portfolio companies, 20+ corporate partners, 100+ investment partners, 50+ strategic advisors, and over 140 mentors. To date, Nex Cubed portfolio companies have an aggregate value of over half a billion dollars and nearly 60% of the Nex Cubed portfolio is led by female or minority founders. 

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Linh Dinh
GE Healthcare
linh.dinh@ge.com