Artificial intelligence (AI) operating system company deepc has announced a partnership with The AI Centre for Value-Based Healthcare (AI4VBH), a conglomeration of London Universities and a hospital trust, in a bid to drive the adoption and deployment of radiology AI across the UK.

The AI4VBH is a London-centric partnership between King’s College London and Guy’s and St Thomas’ National Health Service (NHS) Trust. Established in 2019, the group was created to explore the potential uses of AI across the trust in hopes of improving patient outcomes. Now, deepc says it has partnered with the trust to see its radiology AI software, deepcOS, disseminated throughout the group with the intention to expand to ten trusts.

The company argues that there are as many as 133,000 scans produced every day in the UK, but the NHS faces a 29% shortfall of clinical radiologists needed to analyse those images. As a result, patients could find themselves staying in the hospital for longer due to staffing delays, further impacting the quality of their outcomes. Munich-based deepc claims that its unified, scalable platform has been built to address this problem.

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.”

Initially, the first rollout of the company’s deepcOS will be implemented in six NHS trusts across London and the south of the UK including 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.

The company added that it has made several senior hires to support the partnership alongside the company’s UK expansion after it opened its first UK office located in the London Institute for Healthcare Engineering.

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.”

Elsewhere in the AI healthcare industry, research has found that medtech companies lose 4% of their annual revenue as a result of inefficiencies with AI promising to physician burnout by cutting down on workloads. Meanwhile, Artera has received a California laboratory license from the California Department of Public Health (CDPH) to offer its ArteraAI prostate test.