deepc and The AI Centre for Value-Based Healthcare enter partnership to accelerate and transform NHS adoption of radiology AI

• Long-term strategic collaboration will support The AI Centre for Value-Based Healthcare's mission and enable faster, more effective adoption of clinically proven AI tools across the NHS in London, the South of England and beyond
• deepc will deploy its AI operating system for radiology across six NHS trusts initially
• deepc announces four strategic hires in the UK to support the partnership and its UK growth: Alex King joins as Chief Revenue Officer, Adam Leps as Head of Professional Services, Craig Rhodes as Director of Strategic Partnerships, and Jorge Cardoso as AI Strategist.

LONDON and MUNICH, Oct. 24, 2024 /PRNewswire/ -- deepc, the company behind the leading AI operating system for radiologists and enterprise clinical organisations, has announced a strategic partnership with The AI Centre for Value-Based Healthcare (AI4VBH), King's College London and Guy's and St Thomas' NHS Foundation Trust to accelerate the adoption and deployment of radiology AI in the NHS.

Formed as a collaboration between King's College London and Guy's and St Thomas' along with a consortium of NHS Trusts, universities and UK and multinational industry partners, the AI4VBH was established in 2019 to realise the transformational potential of AI to improve outcomes for patients, drive efficiencies, and support the development of technologies to be used as products across the NHS and internationally. 

The AI4VBH's goal is to speed up and improve diagnosis and care across a large number of care pathways including dementia, heart failure and cancer. Over the past five years, the AI4VBH has developed numerous platforms to provide secure access to high-quality electronic health data for the development of AI models and deployment of AI technology. deepc's partnership with the AI4VBH will be focused on providing technology, resources and expertise to support the continued development of new and existing innovations and to improve the Centre's ability to deploy them in clinical settings.

The collaboration will also see deepc deploy its industry-leading platform, deepcOS, to accelerate and scale the adoption of radiology AI technologies efficiently, safely and securely across six leading NHS Trusts, with the intention to expand to 10 Trusts. The first six NHS Trusts to deploy deepcOS will be Guy's and St Thomas' NHS Foundation Trust, King's College Hospital NHS Foundation Trust, Lewisham and Greenwich NHS Trust, Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust, University Hospitals Sussex NHS Foundation Trust and East Kent Hospitals University NHS Foundation Trust.

Turning the potential benefits of Radiology AI into a reality

Radiology is fundamental to the diagnostic process with approximately 133,000 scans produced every day in the UK, but the NHS faces a 29% shortfall of clinical radiologists to analyse those images¹. This has direct consequences for patient outcomes since any delay in radiology imaging has been shown to have a negative impact on patient outcomes³, including a longer stay in hospital and an increased risk of severe complications.

Radiology AI has the potential to relieve these backlogs by increasing the number of scans radiologists can analyse while improving the accuracy of the diagnosis. There are now over 1000 clinically proven radiology AI solutions available to health systems and organisations globally covering a wide variety of use cases. However, few NHS patients are currently benefiting from these advances because deploying radiology AI solutions in clinical settings remains expensive, time-consuming and technically complex, particularly when dealing with legacy IT systems.

deepc's unified, scalable platform has been built to address this challenge. It allows health systems to benefit from the rapid innovation advancing within radiology AI through a single integration that covers the data privacy, security, regulatory, procurement, integration, deployment, and operational challenges that can often delay the adoption of such new technologies. By making it quicker, easier and cheaper for participating NHS Trusts to access and incorporate state-of-the-art radiology AI tools via a single platform into existing workflows, deepc will help to reduce waiting times for patients, enable clinicians to reach the right diagnosis faster and help relieve the pressure on radiology departments within the NHS.

deepc will implement deepcOS, its industry-leading operating system, giving radiology departments access to more than 75 regulatory-approved AI solutions within a single platform. deepc will start rolling out the platform to initial NHS sites immediately. Longer term, the partnership between deepc and the AI4VBH will also include collaborations to continue providing a safe and secure independent platform to facilitate other organisations and startups working to develop the next generation of AI tools for healthcare.

deepc chosen as industry-leading partner

Following a comprehensive analysis of the needs of the AI4VBH, deepc was identified as being the ideal strategic partner to collaborate with the Centre in developing its long-term aims by bridging the gap between cutting-edge AI innovation and clinical practice. The company has a strong track record of enabling the deployment and scalability of radiology AI solutions. Its platform is available across more than 40 countries and used by leading organisations including Solothurn Hospital in Switzerland, the Vivantes Hospital Group and LMU University Hospital in Germany and the Helse Sør-Øst RHF healthcare region in Norway.

deepc's comprehensive privacy and security framework means solutions available through deepcOS adhere to the highest standards of data privacy and security and the platform was recently certified under new Information Security Standard ISO 27001:2022. At the same time, the vendor-neutral operating system enables radiology departments to evaluate and integrate AI products appropriate to their specific needs.

Earlier this year, deepc opened its first UK office located in the London Institute for Healthcare Engineering and has already partnered with the King's Health Partners Digital Health Hub in London as well as BT in the UK to boost its digital health programme across the NHS.

deepc has made four senior hires to support the partnership and the company's ongoing growth in the UK. Alex King joins the company as its new Chief Revenue Officer and brings with him extensive and rich experience in scaling successful high-technology companies. Joining Alex is Craig Rhodes as the Director of Strategic Partnerships. Craig was in an Executive Healthcare role in a leading AI hardware infrastructure company, where he played a central role in scaling the delivery of AI technologies within a clinical setting. Finally, Adam Leps joins as Head of Professional Services, with over 20 years of experience working in medical imaging. Jorge Cardoso joins as the company's new AI Strategist, bringing a wealth of experience and institutional knowledge as the CTO of the AI Centre to his new role at deepc.

Dr. Franz Pfister, CEO and Co-Founder of deepc, said:

"deepc was created to bridge the rapidly growing divide between what the best AI innovations can now achieve within radiology, and health systems' ability to access those advances. Hospitals and doctors know that AI can help them and their patients but they need support to unlock the benefits and navigate the technical and regulatory challenges. We're incredibly proud to announce this long-term strategic collaboration with the AI Centre for Value Based Healthcare to help accelerate and scale the adoption of radiology AI tools within the NHS. Together, we hope to lay the foundations for the NHS to become a true nucleus of excellence for radiology AI globally."

Professor Sebastien Ourselin FREng FMedSci, Director of The AI Centre for Value Based Healthcare said:

"The AI Centre for Value Based Healthcare aims to transform the potential of AI by providing a home to develop solutions and share guidance with hospitals looking to deploy these technologies. Our partnership with deepc will begin by helping six NHS Trusts access more than 75 clinically proven AI tools, but that is only the beginning. deepc will play a vital role in supporting the AI Centre for Value Based Healthcare's future growth. Working together, we can make the NHS a true leader in the safe and effective use of AI, ultimately delivering benefits to our patients."

Lawrence Tallon, Deputy Chief Executive of Guy's and St Thomas' NHS Foundation Trust said:

"We're excited by this collaboration between the AI Centre for Value-Based Healthcare, deepc and other partners. This partnership will enable us to speed up the development of our AI accelerated learning initiatives. We look forward to working more closely together to realise the benefits of AI in clinical practice for patients across the NHS."

Philippa Kirkpatrick, Chief Digital Information Officer, South East London ICB said:

"The work of the AI Centre for Value Based Healthcare is critical to our health and care system as it delivers expertise in the safe and secure implementation and utilisation of AI. The partnership with deepc offers additional monitoring and oversight tools. The South East London ICB looks forward to continuing to build our partnership with the AI Centre for Value Based Healthcare to help realise the benefits that technology can offer in improving the quality and efficiency of the care provided to the people of South East London and beyond."

References:

1 - https://www.rcr.ac.uk/news-policy/policy-reports-initiatives/state-of-the-wait/#:~:text=A%20major%20reason%20for%20this,patients%20who%20need%20timely%20treatment
2 - https://www.openaccessgovernment.org/unnecessary-delays-radiology-are-crippling-the-nhs-efficiency/152469/
3 - https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/27210242/

About deepc GmbH:

deepc has developed the radiology AI platform deepcOS, providing clinicians with effortless access to a myriad of regulatory-approved globally leading AI solutions for more than 75 clinical indications, delivering more efficient workflows and assisting radiologists in their daily routine. With its rigorous validation of vendor-neutral AI solutions using large-scale independent data, as well as offering a practical evaluation of AI solutions on local clinical data, deepc ensures that radiologists benefit from the best AI solutions that meet their unique requirements. deepc enables easy and fast installation, end-to-end integration, and unified contracting and billing, service, all under a comprehensive privacy & security framework. http://www.deepc.ai/

About the AI Centre for Value-Based Healthcare:

The AI Centre is led by King's College London and Guy's and Thomas' NHS Foundation Trust, alongside multiple NHS Trusts, Universities and UK and multinational industry partners.

Established in February 2019, the AI Centre for Value Based Healthcare is funded by public sector grants from UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) and the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC), Office of Life Sciences, delivered through Innovate UK. This funding has enabled the development of AI platforms and tools with the aim of supporting clinicians and benefiting patient experience.

With the help of AI expert consortium partners, the AI Centre for Value Based Healthcare has developed sophisticated artificial intelligence algorithms from NHS medical images and patient data to provide tools for clinicians to speed up and improve diagnosis and care across several patient pathways.