Lucida Medical (Cambridge start-up) announced that it has joined the Edison Accelerator, a programme designed by GE Healthcare in partnership with innovation organisation Wayra UK, to support early-stage and technologically advanced businesses developing AI applications for healthcare.
Participation in the Edison Accelerator programme is a major advance towards Lucida Medical’s goal to disrupt the cancer diagnostic pathway with technology that finds prostate cancer more accurately by analysing MRI, enabling radiologists to save time and patients to receive the best possible diagnosis and treatment.
Prostate cancer is the most common cancer in men in Europe, Africa and North and South America, with 1.4 million diagnosed worldwide each year and 375,000 deaths. Earlier and better detection saves lives.
The Edison Accelerator creates a collaborative environment for start-ups, research centres, hospitals, clinicians and large corporations across the EMEA region. It aims to foster open innovation and digital transformation of healthcare.
Lucida Medical was invited to join the Edison Accelerator programme for its pioneering work in helping identify prostate cancer and its exceptional development team led by Prof Evis Sala and Dr Antony Rix, both highly experienced in artificial intelligence, or AI, medical technology.
In joining the Edison Accelerator programme, Lucida Medical will:
- Receive mentoring on problem validation, business, regulatory and clinical validation, and deployment.
- Participate in joint pilots between start-up and healthcare partners.
- Access support in customer discovery and product validation.
- Access support in adapting, integrating and launching solutions on the Edison marketplace.
- Access GE Healthcare global commercial force and customers in various markets.
- Receive support for clinical studies and regulatory preparation in target geographies.
Catherine Estrampes, President and CEO, Europe, Middle East & Africa, GE Healthcare, said: “The future of innovation will be about working across silos and collaborating across the healthcare ecosystem, including start-ups, research centres, hospitals and clinicians. The Edison Accelerator brings together leading technology providers, developers and academic institutions under a single, connected ecosystem to create real impact from the bottom line to better patient outcomes.”
Dr Antony Rix, CEO and Co-founder, said: “That Lucida Medical has been chosen to join the prestigious Edison Accelerator programme is both a demonstration of confidence in the technology and our team. This development comes soon after our Prostate Intelligence technology received a CE mark. The support of GE Healthcare and Wayra will help us develop further our technology and access new partners and markets.”
Co-founder and Chief Medical Officer Prof Evis Sala, Professor of Oncological Imaging at the University of Cambridge, said: “We are tremendously excited by our ability to support radiologists to detect cancer accurately and early. The Edison Accelerator programme will now help us bring our technology into clinical use.”
XTX Ventures, the venture capital arm of XTX Markets, provided Lucida Medical with early-stage investment capital from a group of investors in March 2021.