Here at Lightspeed, we are super excited to partner with Prashant Warier and his team at Qure.ai in this growth round of financing. The company has been innovating since 2016 and has really hit another gear in the past three years. We are also excited to partner in the round with investors such as Merck Global Health Innovation Fund, Novo Nordisk, Fractal, Healthquad, Kae Capital and 360 One.
If you’d asked me two years ago whether we’d be seeing fast-growth companies in healthcare+AI, I would have been a bit skeptical. After all, healthcare is a notoriously difficult sector to get into because of technology gatekeepers (such as Epic), heavy regulatory requirements, stringent data/privacy rules, and general risk-averseness on the part of providers/payers to accept new technology. But the amount of manual workflows, gigantic amounts of unstructured data and large spend pool ($4.5 trillion or 17.3% of the US economy in 2022 and an equal absolute amount in the rest of the world) makes this an attractive venue for AI innovation.
On top of this, if you’d asked me whether we’d see a ton of AI adoption by organizations outside the US, I would have said let’s look at the US first and also perhaps assume the rest of the world starts with prosumer use-cases as well as experimentation with models from the US.
I’ve been surprised on both counts.
We’re seeing startup after startup that is seeing equal if not more adoption within healthcare providers in the US/EU as well as in developing regions such as India, Africa, Southeast Asia and Latin America. Whether it’s AI scribes or AI for revenue cycle management or AI for triage/diagnoses or AI for clinical trials, I’ve never seen faster adoption of technology by the healthcare industry.
What got us to sit up and notice Qure was how it is revolutionizing medical imaging, leveraging AI to drive markedly better health outcomes across the world.
Global Health as the initial wedge: The company started in and continues to dominate the Global Health sector. There is $5.8 billion of annual spend in combating just TB, a good portion of which goes to technology companies. Qure’s products are deeply embedded in the global health landscape, where the company serves national government programs, non-profits and healthcare providers in over 90 countries, primarily for TB screening and other lung diseases (with regulatory approval present in each). In some cases, there are 1-2 radiologists per country and there is no option but to rely on technology to solve this sharp pain point.
We then dived into the technology:
Battle-tested products and proprietary data: Qure’s cloud-based software seamlessly integrates with existing radiology equipment such as X-rays and CT scans to prioritize patient cases or provide clinical support. For example, it can decrease the time taken to generate an imaging report from weeks to a few seconds. Qure’s AI platform, trained on an extensive data set of over 1.5 billion images, enables early detection of critical conditions such as tuberculosis, lung cancer, and stroke, facilitating timely interventions and improved patient outcomes. The sensitivity and specificity of Qure’s diagnosis are on par, if not better than physician standards. The company has 18+ FDA clearances and has an extensive publication history in some of the leading journals in healthcare, such as Nature and The Lancet.
From the traction in global gealth and the efficacy and broad applicability of the products, we then looked at the potential going forward:
Chronic diseases on the rise while the number of medical professionals stays constrained globally: Unfortunately, chronic diseases, genetic mutations, cardiovascular diseases and other health conditions are on the rise, whether TB or lung cancer or neurological diseases. At the same time, there is a growing talent shortage of skilled imaging professionals, who have to grapple with overwhelming image volumes and complex cases, often resulting in delays in report generation and delayed diagnoses.
Early screening and detection increasingly important: Early screening and detection have become the cornerstones of effective treatment and overall patient wellness. Whether driven through Value-based Care (VBC) in the US or through a lack of radiologists/physicians in many parts of the world, there is a need for cost-effective and widely usable early detection solutions – early detection results in early treatment which leads to higher quality-of-life for all of us, together with reducing the need for expensive treatments for late-stage diseases. For example, Qure partnered with AstraZeneca EDISON Alliance to screen for lung cancer, via the incidental detection of high-risk nodules using Chest X-ray AI. This is off to a great start with 3 million scans achieved across resource constrained regions of the UK, Asia, Latin America, Middle East and Africa.
The US/EU as large potential markets: We are excited about the prospects of AI being adopted in the US/EU. With AI scribes getting adopted almost virally across physicians, nurses, and administrators, we think this is the AI moment in healthcare. We think the day is not far when AI gets used for diagnosis purposes, well beyond being a source of second opinions. Qure is ready for that moment and already making inroads into the US/Europe with customers such as the National Health Service (NHS) in the UK as well as provider deployments in the US.
We believe that Qure is poised to become the leading player in radiology AI globally. We couldn’t be more stoked to partner with Prashant and his team!
~ The Lightspeed team
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