Qure.ai nets $65M for foundational AI 

Qure.ai has raised $65 million in a Series D funding round led by Lightspeed and 360 ONE Asset. 

The company said it will use its fresh funds to invest more in foundational AI models, as well as acquire complementary startups in medical technology. It will also be used to accelerate its expansion in the United States and other markets. 

Early this year, the Mumbai-based company obtained two major clearances from the United States Food and Drug Administration: a breakthrough device designation for its tuberculosis screening AI solution, qSpot-TB, and a 510(k) clearance for the lung nodule on the qXR AI-powered chest X-ray software.

Mediwhale bags $12M to seek US FDA approval 

South Korean health diagnostics firm Mediwhale has scored $12 million in a Series A2 funding round led by the Korea Development Bank. 

The company claims to offer the world's first retina-based solution – called Reti-CVD – that uses AI to assess cardiovascular disease risk. 

It plans to use its new funds to pursue a US FDA approval for Reti-CVD. The software was reportedly rolled out across the Yonsei University Health System early this year. 

"We are determined to secure FDA De Novo approval by 2025, with plans to launch our product in the United States shortly thereafter," CEO Kevin Choi said in a statement. 

Besides securing a regulatory clearance, Mediwhale also seeks to improve its AI further and develop new solutions to predict chronic kidney disease risk. 

Mediwhale last raised $2 million in a pre-Series A funding round in 2021 and $9 million in a Series A round in 2023. 

Huawei launches medical imaging AI 

Huawei recently unveiled a new AI-powered solution for analysing medical images. 

Called "Medical Technology Digitalization 2.0," the technology enables smart segmentation, detection, and quantitative analysis of medical images using AI with up to 98% accuracy. Huawei claims the solution can shorten disease diagnosis time by 40%, although it has not specified which disease. 

Additionally, the AI solution can also be applied to ultrasound devices running on the OpenHarmony operating system.

The Chinese tech giant worked with several local medical technology companies, including MED Imaging AI, Wanxiang, Beijing DeepWise, and KFBIO, to develop the solution, which has been implemented in such major projects as the Fourth People's Hospital in Shenyang, capital of China’s northeast Liaoning Province. 

Korean pharma turns to AI for new drug discovery

Korean pharmaceutical company GI Innovation is pursuing the application of AI for new drug development. 

It recently signed a memorandum of understanding with local company i-Divine to develop its core cancer drug pipelines and utilise the latter's AI solution to discover new cancer therapy targets. 

i-Divine's AI is based on a large language model trained on over a billion patents, papers, and real-time biological data sourced globally. It was previously utilised to analyse the success potential of 16,000 new drug substances, including one of GI Innovation's anti-cancer drug pipelines.  

MediBuddy adopts Philips' predictive heart AI 

MediBuddy in India is integrating Philips' heart health monitoring platform into its mobile health application. 

The AI-based longitudinal triaging solution called HeartPrint tracks and assesses key biomarkers from a person's finger when scanned through their smartphone's camera. These include cardiovascular age, diabetes risk, OSA risk, cardio-respiratory fitness index, heart rate analysis, cardiac index, blood pressure variability, and stress disorder prediction. 

The AI solution also analyses patterns indicating a person's risk of developing heart disease, overall health deterioration, heart resilience, and short and long-term changes in cardiac function.