The winners of the Future Healthcare accelerator have been selected in Moscow

Meds network of clinics and Moscow Centre for Healthcare Innovations selected the best startups in the Future Healthcare accelerator.  

Teams of the best startups together with specialists from the Moscow Centre for Innovative Technologies in Healthcare, Medsi and doctors from the capital's medical institutions will jointly finalize digital solutions for further integration into the city's healthcare system.

"Future Healthcare is a unique accelerator, where startups were given the opportunity to pilot their developments in the city's medical facilities and Medsi clinics, as well as receive feedback from leading doctors in Moscow. A total of 224 applications were submitted to the Future Healthcare accelerator. Based on the results of the piloting and evaluation of the projects by chief freelance specialists of the Department of Health, we identified five winners. These are digital services based on artificial intelligence for pathomorphological diagnosis of oncological diseases, forecasting the risk of disease development and improving the quality of monitoring their course. The selected solutions will be further developed together with specialists from the Moscow Centre for Innovative Technologies in Health Care, Medsi clinics and doctors from Moscow hospitals and polyclinics in order to introduce them into the capital's health care system in the future," said Anastasia Rakova, Deputy Mayor of Moscow for Social Development.

The main freelance specialists of the Moscow Health Department and experts evaluated the relevance and practical applicability of the developments in the city's health care system. Developments were piloted on the basis of municipal medical organisations and private clinics Medsi. The key areas include technologies for big data analysis and application of artificial intelligence to support medical decision-making, preventive medicine services and remote patient monitoring.

"As a leader in private healthcare in Russia, Medsi is actively introducing modern technologies and innovations into its practices. We see great demand for digital services and artificial intelligence, which are truly transforming the healthcare system and changing traditional models of medical service delivery. Medsi's participation in the acceleration programme will make it possible to launch interesting and promising projects aimed at improving the quality of medical care and developing new services for our patients," commented Elena Brusilova, President of Medsi Group.

The winners of the accelerator were the following technological projects:

1. Medical Neuronets – a decision-making aid system for pathomorphologists based on artificial intelligence. The service examines digitised images of tissue samples and looks for correlations in the data, where humans do not see correlations or contradictions. The service will make the work of pathomorphologists easier and improve the quality of the research performed, given the shortage of resources. One of the company's solutions under development will be simulation of immunohistochemical studies without the use of reagents.

2. Third opinion – a platform for recognising pathological changes in various medical images and improving the quality of monitoring the course of diseases based on artificial intelligence technology. Solution from the top 5 companies participating in the experiment on artificial intelligence in radiology.

3. Zdorovie.ru is Russia's first platform to develop digital therapy services for patients with chronic diseases. The company is the market leader and covers more than 20 nosologies. The company's mission is to help people with health problems change their behaviour and attitude culture. This year, the company, together with the Moscow Centre for Innovative Technologies in Healthcare, plans to implement a number of RWE studies to prove the effectiveness of digital therapies. To date, there are already several companies worldwide which have confirmed that digital services can increase the effectiveness of treatment and improve people's quality of life. There are also plans to launch a decentralised research service based on the services, analogues of which are virtually non-existent on the international market.

4. Webiomed is a medical decision-making support system that automatically analyses medical data, identifies risk factors and suspected diseases, and uses them to make predictions about the likelihood of disease development. It successfully passed clinical trials and was registered by Roszdravnadzor as a medical device.

5. Viewpoint is a highly accurate artificial intelligence system for detecting colorectal polyps during standard real-time colonoscopy procedures.

"Congratulations to the teams, each of the finalists is worthy of the opportunity to benefit doctors and patients of Moscow medical institutions. I would like to share one of the significant events of the accelerator: the startup Medical Neuronets together with the chief pathomorphologist of Moscow, Nikita Savelov, were the first in the world to train a neural network to recognise colorectal cancer using artificial intelligence. In order to achieve similar breakthroughs, we plan to conduct similar acceleration programmes and other events on a systematic basis in the future," said Vyacheslav Shulenin, General Director of the Moscow Centre for Innovative Technologies in Healthcare.

The Moscow Centre for Healthсare Innovations is a place for Moscow doctors, scientific teams and startups to work together to accelerate the implementation of innovative solutions in the city's health care. Earlier, the centre opened its own medical technopark. Its residents may include companies developing medical technologies, which in the future may be implemented in Moscow healthcare.