nir-vana innovation network

There is currently a great uncertainty on how the patients respond to oncology treatments, especially those who are underrepresented in clinical trials. This causes a good number of complications, some of them severe, which can lead to the hospitalization of patients, hindering their recovery, reducing their quality of life and increasing their hospital costs, which represent a high percentage of expenses per patient. This also impacts the pharmaceutical industry, which requires maintaining competitive performances against every new oncology treatment available in the market.

The Spanish company, created in 2016, is specialized in the healthcare industry whose mission is to reduce patient complications through AI solutions. In this context, the company offers a unique and scalable federated database system in compliance with the data protection regulatory framework. This system benefits not only the customers (Health providers and Pharma), improving their clinical outcomes and reducing uncertainty and unexpected complications and costs by at least 30% by 2023, but also the patients' compliance, improving and tailoring their care and follow-up. It stores every patient’s data which easily allows analysing Real-World Data (RWD) and creates different predictive models, such as those for treatment complications, each offering new monetization capabilities to the company. Moreover, the system is able to develop new, better and targeted ways to treat cancer. The company estimates that the technology will increase patients' compliance rate over 90%.

This system guides the patient during the whole process of its treatment and recovery. It is a mobile application that enables the communication with the doctor and monitors the patient´s symptoms and life quality. By analysing the data provided, the system evaluates the results and effectiveness of treatments for different patient profiles. This manner, the doctor’s decision making is improved as she/he will have the information before the medical consultation and the system will compare the patient’s characteristics with other previous patients with similar symptoms. Moreover, the system is able to make early detections thanks to monitoring and also population analysis where the system is in constant learning. In addition, the application has been certificated since the beginning by medical and legal entities for its feasibility either in the medical treatment and the data protection. It has already been tested in a couple of Basque hospitals and it is implemented in those centres thanks to the positive results. Indeed, the product meets the requirements of the European laws in terms of data acquisition and protection.

The company has already obtained contracts with strategic partners in hospital and pharmaceutical markets: a top5 multinational pharmaceutical company in oncology, the biggest private hospital group in Spain, a top3 biggest public hospital in Spain, a reference public Health System, amongst others. Since its incorporation, the system has obtained over 1M euros total funding and various international awards (i.e., eDeaSalud2018 price of Pfizer Foundation). The company’s objective is to expand across Europe in the next years.

The company is offering this product to healthcare facilities and hospitals with oncology service, preferably, through a commercial agreement with technical assistance in which the company would help the customer in any issue raised but the management of the program would belong to the customer. Cooperation through a license agreement is also envisaged.

Advantages & innovations

The AI system’s advantages can be separated regarding the subject they benefit. The system guides the patient through the various steps of the illness and recovery. It accompanies the patient whenever needed, directly from his or her own mobile device. It also helps the patient resolve questions about the disease, treatments and recommended lifestyle habits. All the information contained is validated by a medical team. Lastly, the system facilitates communication with the doctor, systematically reporting toxicity, symptoms and quality of life. The patient will complete the information from the place that best suits her/him and at the time she/he wishes. For the oncologist, the system improves the quality of information collected from the results reported by patients. It ensures that information from all patients will be comparable with each other. It also improves the doctor’s performance in consultation, ensuring complete collection of information before it. In addition, the system speeds up and improves the decision-making process, presenting the information reported by the patient in a clear and summarized way. It compares the characteristics of the current patient with similar patients in the system and presents their evolution to the disease and treatment. From the point of view of the hospital, the system evaluates the effectiveness of treatments for different patient profiles. It is able to identify groups of patients at risk or of interest with respect to a certain treatment. Moreover, it identifies adverse effects and records the characteristics and context in which they have occurred. It also identifies patient profiles for which certain treatments are not effective and provides the corresponding information so that the prescription of the most optimal option can be planned. To finish with, the hospital can manage the data in the same system, without having to worry about counting and storage capacity.

Stage of development

Already on the market

Partner sought

The company is looking for a hospital or healthcare facility with oncology service where the system may be implemented, preferably, through a commercial agreement with technical assistance or a license agreement. The partner would act as a system integrator of the technology offered by the Basque SME. They would prefer to interact directly with the team in charge of the Hospital's ICT systems whether this is run by externals or by an intern foundation. The company would help the customer in any issue raised but the management of the program would belong to the customer. Finally, the company also seeks future scientific publications or divulgations about the system in order to gain prestige. This task would also be done in cooperation with the partner sought.