Healthtech startup Feebris has announced a successful seed investment raise of £1.1 million for AI-powered disease diagnosis.
Founded by Elina Naydenova and Adam Bacon in 2017, and supported by healthtech accelerator HS., Google for Startups, Social Tech Trust, and White & Case, the company has raised seed funding, led by 24 Haymarket and including a grant from Innovate UK.
Commenting on the investment, Paul Tselentis, CEO of 24Haymarket, said: “Feebris’s cutting-edge AI-platform has the potential to solve one of the most pressing problems in our healthcare systems and provide immense value to patients and physicians alike. This is an exciting time for Feebris; and 24Haymarket are pleased to be supporting them as they build on their early engagement with healthcare providers.”
Feebris is an AI company developing machine learning algorithms for precision detection of complex respiratory conditions in the field. Its software platform pairs with existing medical sensors and can be used intuitively by those with little or no medical training, even outside a clinic environment, to detect respiratory issues. During a study in Mumbai in 2017, the team demonstrated with 1,300 children that its software could be used by community health workers to diagnose pneumonia with accuracy comparable to a hospital diagnosis via blood test and x-ray.
The company will also work with 1,000 elderly patients in the UK to develop AI-powered remote monitoring for COPD and asthma.
CEO Dr. Elina Naydenova from Oxford University created the concept for Feebris whilst interning at the World Health Organisation in 2014 and has been working on the technology ever since. In 2018, she was awarded $100,000 by the Children’s Prize Foundation, to scale the work in India.
Dr Naydenova said: “I was shocked that despite being a treatable condition, pneumonia kills one million children under-five every year - more than HIV, malaria, and TB combined. When I realised these deaths can be avoided through early diagnosis, I became obsessed with finding a way to solve the problem.
“By putting our technology into the hands of frontline nurses and care workers, we will power the future of remote precision diagnosis, enabling patients to receive care before they are seriously ill, which means that clinicians are able to focus on patients rather than data. We aim to become a world-leader in the development of CE certified AI for respiratory disease diagnosis and monitoring.
“This investment will support Feebris’ AI-enabled platform to continue bridging the gap between the community and providers across a range of respiratory conditions including pneumonia, COPD and asthma.”
Currently 24% of all emergency admissions in the UK could be avoided with more effective community care and case management and 58% of these are from respiratory conditions alone. Delayed diagnosis can have life-threatening and life-changing consequences, which also place an overwhelming burden on health systems globally - respiratory conditions and their associated complications alone are estimated to cost the UK up to £165 billion.
