British artificial intelligence (AI) firm Sensyne Health has entered a formal research agreement with the UK Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) to help develop methods to validate software algorithms used in digital health.

The firm announced the collaboration in its annual report for the year ending April 2019, which was published this week.  

Sensyne also revealed it has stuck a deal with a Fortune 200 company and a data infrastructure specialist to launch and scale its health products in the US. The initial focus will be on taking its gestational diabetes product, GDm-Health, to the US market. 
 
WHY IT MATTERS

Speaking about the collaboration with the UK MHRA, Sensyne Health’s CEO, Lord Drayson, said that new techniques using AI and machine learning have the potential to improve patient care and accelerate medical research, but also require the development of new methods to validate them. 

“As a leading company in the field of clinical AI we are delighted to be working with the UK's regulatory agency on this vital project,” he said. 

THE LARGER CONTEXT
 
Oxford-based Sensyne Health was founded by Former UK science minister Lord Drayson and is backed by Sir John Bell, Regius professor of medicine at the University of Oxford and author of the UK’s Life Sciences Industrial Strategy, and former NHS England national medical director Sir Bruce Keogh.
 
In August, the firm announced a £5m two-year collaboration agreement with Bayer to accelerate the clinical development of new treatments for cardiovascular disease.

This followed an announcement in June that it had partnered with drug discovery and development company, Evotec, Oxford University Innovation, Oxford Sciences Innovation and the University of Oxford called LAB10x to accelerate the commercialisation of digital therapeutics and data- driven drug discovery from clinical AI research and digital health innovations.

Also this year, five NHS trusts adopted Sensyne Health’s GDm-Health solution, which enables remote management of gestational diabetes.
 
ON THE RECORD
 
In the annual report, Lord Drayson said: “Our recent announcement of an agreement with a Fortune 200 company to become our sales and marketing partner in the US completes the set of objectives set out at IPO and provides a strong foundation for future growth.”

He added: “With the establishment of the Fortune 200 company relationship in the US, we have now created an efficient pathway for digital health and Clinical AI innovations to transfer from the University of Oxford labs, via clinical validation in the NHS and then to scalable deployment across the UK and the US.”