Could a new artificial intelligence (AI)-enabled advance have an impact in the diagnosis and treatment of brain aneurysms? The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has granted 510(k) clearance to Aidoc's new AI platform for brain aneurysms. In addition to identifying and triaging suspected cases, the algorithm facilitates communication and workflow between radiologists, neurologists and neuroendovascular surgeons, according to the company. Researchers have estimated that approximately 6.5 million people in the United States have an unruptured brain aneurysm.1 The Brain Aneurysm Foundation has noted that most aneurysms are small, ranging from 1/8 inch to an inch, and ruptured aneurysms are reportedly misdiagnosed or there is a delay in diagnosis in 25 percent of patients who present to health-care providers.1 Elad Walach, the CEO and co-founder of Aidoc, said the new AI-enabled algorithm may help enhance timely diagnosis and care for brain aneurysms.

Catching abnormalities on a medical image is important, but case backlogs often mean radiologists are cut short on how long they can spend with each one. Enter Aidoc, a 4-year-old Israel-based startup providing artificial intelligence tools for radiologists. The company secured an additional $20 million for its Series B funding led by Square Peg Capital, which initially led the round that began in April 2019. The new funds bring the Series B round to $47 million and gives Aidoc a total of $60 million raised to date, according to Crunchbase data. If the AI detects something, the tools alert the radiologist, Aidoc co-founder and CEO Elad Walach told Crunchbase News. "What has happened in recent history is that scanners have become cheaper, so now there is more imaging, which is overloading a radiologist's workflow," he said.

Aidoc, which bills itself as an AI solutions provider for radiologists, today closed a $20 million extension to the series B it raised in April 2019, bringing the round total to $47 million and the company's total raised to $60 million. Cofounder and CEO Elad Walach says the money will be used to support new customers after revenue tripled from the beginning of 2020. Computer vision holds promise for the $6.5 trillion medical diagnostics industry, as highlighted by a 2018 paper in the journal Nature that found that some algorithms can identify skin cancer as accurately as a panel of doctors. For instance, Sight Diagnostics uses machine learning algorithms to perform point-of-care complete blood count (CBC) tests within 10 minutes with no more than a pinprick of blood. Aidoc got its start in 2016, when veterans of the Israeli Defense Force put their heads together to create an AI platform targeting certain health care verticals.

Meanwhile, the FDA has fast-tracked approval of AI-driven products, from approving just 1 in 2014 to 23 in 2018. Many of these products haven't been subjected to clinical trials since they utilize the FDA's 510(k) approval path, which allows companies to market products without clinical trials as long as they are "at least as safe and effective, that is, substantially equivalent, to a legally marketed device." This process has made many in the AI health industry happy. This includes Elad Walach the co-founder and chief executive officer of Aidoc, a startup focused on eliminating bottlenecks in medical image diagnosis. "The FDA 510(k) process has been very effective," Walach told Healthline.

Israeli radiology startup Aidoc has received FDA clearance for its AI-based product meant to help identify potential cases of pulmonary embolism in chest CT scans. Pulmonary embolism (PE) – which occurs when a blood clot gets lodged in the lung – is considered a silent killer that causes up to 200,000 deaths a year in the United States. The condition often strikes with little to no warning and diagnosis of a case can be extremely time-sensitive. Aidoc's technology doesn't require dedicated hardware and runs continuously on hospital systems, automatically ingesting radiological images. The 70-person company focuses on workflow optimization in radiology to help triage high risk patients for additional and faster review.

It's not every day that TIME magazine calls you a genius. Walach is the 30-year-old CEO of Aidoc, a two-year-old Tel Aviv-based startup that is saving lives through medical imaging. Aidoc applies proprietary artificial intelligence to the millions of images generated every year by CT scans in order to catch serious issues before a human radiologist even has a chance to review the results. Aidoc has already received US and European approval to assess scans of brain hemorrhages and spinal fractures. TIME included the startup on its list of "50 Genius Companies of 2018," a prestigious cohort that includes well-known names such as Amazon, Airbnb and Apple (and that's just the As).

It is the early days,

We are probably still quite some way off from seeing Artificial Intelligence (AI) replace doctors, but there are already lots of proven use-cases where AI is being used to augment the medical profession. One proven area is in medical imaging where AI and computer vision is helping with medical scan and imaging analysis to help support radiologists and other clinicians. One startup operating in this space is AIdoc Medical. The company has built what co-founder and CEO Elad Walach describes as an AI that can spot visual abnormalities in medical scans. The technology is designed to fit into a radiologist's existing workflow to help make their job more efficient.