BGI's Former Director of AI Lab Joins Deepwise

Healthcare Author: Yusuf Tuna May 09, 2019 10:32 PM (GMT+8)

BGI's former director of AI lab, LIU Xiaoqing, joins Deepwise to open a new chapter in the company's advanced AI R&D facilities. She aims to further develop the decision-making algorithms of the medical imaging diagnosis product.

BGI's former director of AI lab, LIU Xiaoqing (刘小青), joins Deepwise (深睿医疗) to open a new chapter in the company's advanced AI R&D facilities. She aims to further develop the decision-making algorithm of Deepwise, particularly in the medical imaging diagnosis product of the company. 

BGI (华大基因) is a Shenzhen based genome sequencing company and it is a globally competitive company in its area. A gigantic amount of data is dealt with during a genome sequencing process, and Dr Liu is one of the leaders in this area. She considers precision medicine as a paradigm changer development in medicine.

"Unveiling the potential information and the use of deep learning-based visualization technology help doctors to see the huge information that is invisible for the bare eyes. Establishing the confidence of diagnosis executions for the doctors and patients in the medical field will mainly be thanks to the AI technology." Dr. Liu stated.

Deepwise is a latecomer Chinese Medical-AI company that is using AI to interpret medical-imaging. Founded in March 2017,  the company successively raised around CNY 300 million (USD 43 million) in 3 rounds of financing in its first year.

However, Deepwise's business model has located itself in a highly competitive environment. 12Sigma (图玛深维), Huiyihuiying (汇医慧影), Yitu (依图科技), Infervision (推想科技) are the other major players in AI supported medical image analysis market.

Deepwise focuses on Lung and Breast cancer, which are the most problematic types in China. On the other hand, Signify Research expects that Lung and Breast cancer Medical AI analysis applications will occupy around 30% of the entire MI analysis by 2023. 

The major products provided by the company are the lung and breast cancer screening and early diagnosis support software. The company claims its lung nodule screening product was able to achieve sensitivity and specificity of 98.6% and 92.9%, respectively.

Although Deepwise seems small and non-assertive among the other competitors; the company has attracted the investments and the attention thanks to their administrative team. "The company's executive team's relevant track record and relationships with some of the local governments are impressive," stated EO Healthcare analyst who is familiar with the matter.