A check up by Khosla Ventures determined that Docbot Inc. was healthy enough for the prominent biotech investor to take the lead in a $4 million series A round. The new funds bring the artificial intelligence company to a total of $8.5 million in capital raised to date. Other participants included Bold Capital Partners, Collaborative Fund and Boutique Venture Partners. Docbot's platform, Ultivision AI, uses artificial intelligence to enhance detection of gastrointestinal (GI) disease. The Irvine, Calif.-based company is targeting identification and classification of polyps, Barrett's esophagus, and ulcerative colitis to start.

Israeli MedTech companies have experienced quite the acceleration process following the COVID-19 outbreak, with digital health companies garnering the bulk of the focus. The AI medical train has left the station with companies like Ibex Medical, Aidoc, Scopio, and more all scoring funding and coveted FDA approvals this year. However, in the land of medical-AI FDA clearances, one horse stands alone, or should I say Zebra. Israeli startup Zebra Medical Vision, the deep-learning medical imaging analytics company, announces today its seventh FDA clearance. The newly approved solution utilizes the power of AI to extract bone measurements from X-ray scans, similar in quality to CT scans, for the purpose of planning orthopedic surgical procedures.

Cardio-focused digital health company AliveCor landed FDA clearance for its new suite of interpretive ECG algorithms, dubbed the Kardia AI V2. This news comes just days after the company announced a $65 million Series E funding round. The new clearance will is able to capture sinus rhythm with premature ventricular contractions, sinus rhythm with supraventricular ectopy and a sinus rhythm with wide QRS. The algorithm works on AliveCor's KardiaMobile and KardiaMobile 6L devices, which even before this latest FDA clearance, have been able to take 30-second ECGs, and are hooked up to a corresponding app. According to the company's release, the algorithm will also reduce the number of unclassified readings, and has improved sensitivity and specificity on the company's normal and atrial fibrillation algorithms. Users will also have new visualization tools that let them see heart beat average, PVC identification and tachogram.

Scopio Labs, a leading provider of Full Field Morphology (FFM), announced that it was granted FDA clearance to market and sell its X100 with Full Field Peripheral Blood Smear (Full Field PBS) Application, unlocking the potential of in vitro hematology diagnosis. Full Field PBS is also available in Europe with CE mark certification granted earlier this year. Blood is one of the most foundational gateways to health information. Even with the adoption of digital tools, today's solutions do not showcase all required regions of interest in a PBS slide, only capturing snapshots of cells. To help improve diagnostic accuracy leveraging novel computer vision tools, Full Field PBS gives clinical laboratories an unprecedented ability to capture digital scans using advanced computational photography imaging and tailored AI tools.

Aidoc announced today that the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has given regulatory clearance for the commercial use of its triaging and notification algorithms for flagging and communicating incidental pulmonary embolism . Flagging incidental, critical findings is a huge technical challenge due to the varied imaging protocols used and lower incidences of such cases. The ability to prioritize incidental critical conditions accurately is a breakthrough in the value AI can bring to the radiologist workflow. "The most common use case we experienced is for critical unsuspected findings in oncology surveillance patients" said Dr. Cindy Kallman, Chief, Section of CT at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center. "The ability to call the referring physician while the patient is still in the house is huge. We are essentially offering a point-of-care diagnosis of PE for our outpatients. Our referring physicians have been completely wowed by this."

Zebra Medical Vision, an Israeli medical imaging analytics company, said on Monday it received clearance from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for its mammography technology. The company's latest cleared product uses artificial intelligence to prioritize and identify suspicious mammograms. The mammograms are automatically sent to Zebra's platform, where they are processed and analysed for suspected breast lesions. The HealthMammo product then returns its result to the radiologist. It is the company's first oncology tool to receive FDA clearance.

Mumbai-based startup Qure uses an AI imaging tool qER to save precious minutes for emergency room staff to take action based on head CT scans. After deployment in India and several other countries, qER is now entering the US where 75 million CT scans are performed every year. A couple of weeks ago, Qure received US FDA 510 (k) clearance for this product. What makes it special is a four-in-one clearance. The tool has been cleared for triaging four critical conditions--intracranial bleeds, mass effect (due to spaces in the brain filling up), midline shift (in the brain's alignment), and cranial fractures.

Tel-Aviv based start-up Aidoc, a leading provider of Artificial Intelligence solutions for radiologists, received US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) clearance for its AI solution that spots strokes (Large-Vessel Occlusion) in the brain during head CTA scans.An LVO is the blockage of vessels in the brain, and according to Ariella Shoham, Aidoc's vice president of marketing, the AI technology "uses deep learning to automatically look at every head CT before a patient has even left the imaging room. "It investigates the images to see if they show blocked blood vessels in the brain or bleeding (intracranial hemorrhages)," she explained. "If one of these time-critical conditions is found, Aidoc re-prioritizes the worklists of radiologists so that the urgent scan is looked at immediately and the patient can be treated quickly."Shoham said that Aidoc already received FDA clearances to identify and flag pulmonary embolism (blockages in the lungs) and cervical spine fractures (broken neck). "Other Aidoc solutions currently in clinical testing include identifying air in the abdomen," she continued. "Altogether, Aidoc is targeting the most common critical life-threatening conditions that make up 80% of all urgent cases on CT scans.

A new report estimates the cost of waste in the U.S. healthcare system alone ranges as high as $935 billion a year, about 25 percent of total healthcare spending. A growing army of startups and established practitioners sees the inefficiencies as a trillion-dollar opportunity to apply AI. The U.S. spends about 18 percent of its gross domestic product on healthcare, more than any other country. A report published online by the Journal of the American Medical Association surveyed 54 studies to estimate annual waste figures in six broad categories, including failures from choosing ineffective treatments (up to $166 billion), failures from coordinating multiple treatments ($78 billion), fraud and abuse ($84 billion) and administrative complexity ($266 billion). "Implementation of effective measures to eliminate waste represents an opportunity to reduce the continued increases in U.S. health care expenditures," the report concluded.

And humans need health screenings, especially for the heart. That's because heart disease is the leading cause of death worldwide. With deep learning, heart disease diagnosis is becoming easier and more accessible -- which in turn can improve treatment and patient outcomes. Echocardiograms -- ultrasound tests that generate images of the heart -- are used to detect and manage heart disease cases. An echo, as it's commonly called, is also used as an assessment tool for specific populations, such as chemotherapy patients, because of their increased risk of heart failure.