A new report from Juniper Research identifies 10 emerging entrepreneurial companies as disruptors, catalysts and emerging threats to create turmoil and opportunities in healthcare.

The Juniper analysis focuses on several criteria:

  • Innovation – ability of companies to develop new and distinct products or service offerings.
  • Agility – ability of companies to bring products or services to market quickly and iterate effectively on existing solutions.
  • Presence – approximation of a company’s size based on number of employees and specifically investment levels in the AI in digital health market.

A look at the leading players:

The Disruptors

  • Babylon Health – Babylon Health is a subscription-based telemedicine provider, which offers mobile-based consultations with doctors via text messaging and video calling. The system allows prescriptions to be issued, as well as for follow up care to be booked with local providers.
  • Zephyr Health – Zephyr Health offers a unique IaaS (Insights as a Service) system in healthcare, which provides a fundamentally different service to others in the space. The service, Zephyr Illuminate, is targeted at life sciences companies, offering them insights on the effectiveness of clinical trials and what doctors/healthcare facilities to target.

The Catalyst Player

  • Ada Health – Ada Health produces Ada, an AI-powered smartphone app that allows the diagnosis of conditions via a chatbot interface, as well as other telemedicine functions. The system has been ‘trained’ using patient data to recognise conditions and also has a more sophisticated version for clinical applications.

The Nascent Player

  • iCarbonX – iCarbonX is a Chinese-based AI company which is developing products that aim to utilise Big Data analysis to provide personalised health treatments. Its first release is Meum, a mHealth application that can give individually tailored advice on diet and when to sleep.

The Embryonic Players

  • Deep Genomics – Deep Genomics is a Canada-based provider of disease-agnostic genomic services, aiming to provide researchers and healthcare professionals with DNA-based insights that can assist in screening and targeted healthcare delivery.
  • Desktop Genetics – Desktop Genetics is a company utilising AI to improve biotechnology development. Its focus is on easing the process of genome editing, utilising CRISPR (Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats) technology.
  • AiCure – AiCure is a US-based AI company, offering an innovative solution in the digital health market. AiCure’s solution utilises AI to drive medication adherence, a huge problem in the general population and a specific problem in clinical trials.
  • CareSkore – A US -based start -up, CareSkore specialises in using AI in an innovative way, to guide population health management delivery. At present, however, the data included in the system is fragmented and limited, with more work needed with industry partners to ensure success.
  • Infermedica – Infermedica is a AI company based in Poland. Its offering is an AI engine that allows AI to be utilised in the triage of patients and for preliminary medical diagnosis. The system allows doctors to send in a patient’s vital statistics, which the system then uses to generate questions. This allows intuitive, evidence -based triage.
  • Atomwis e – A biotechnology company based in the US, Atomwise is applying AI to healthcare in an innovative way. Its solution utilises AI learning techniques to attempt to understand potential new uses for existing pharmaceuticals. This system is called AtomNet. While in the extremely early stages of development, it is already being used by Merck, a large global pharmaceutical company.