Th radiotherapy-support-focused AI company secured over CNY 40 million in its Series A+ funding round to bankroll its ‘costly’ product registration process in China.
LinkingMed (连心医疗), a radiotherapy-focused medical cloud provider, was initially reported on by EqualOcean for its commercialization license success on September 16 of this year; on October 30, the company announced that it had attracted further investment from a couple of venture capital firms, worth over CNY 40 million. Besides the existing investor Linear Capital, Beijing-based Grains Valley (磐谷创投) and Tianjin-based private equity firm Binhai Capital (滨海创投) contributed to the Series A+.
In August 2019, the National Medical Products Administration (NMPA) issued a Class III type license to LinkingMed. The licensing paves the way for the company’s commercialization of its cloud solution.
This has been an exciting year, not only for LinkingMed but also for radiologists around the globe. We learned that AI may help to improve tumor contouring accuracy in radiotherapy, optimizing the adjustment of radiation, saving hours of tedious work for doctors and ultimately increasing the entire efficacy of the treatment.
Yet the concept is now new, AI-supported radiology companies have mushroomed in the last five years. Beijing-based LinkingMed started in the radiation oncology industry at the end of 2016 and developed four products within three years. The company is offering AI-driven organ contouring, radiotherapy planning and third-party imaging services.
LinkingMed is also providing medical cloud services through remote collaboration and operation services to the radiation oncologists and medical physicists, in a move to provide a solution to the country’s unevenly distributed human resources problems in healthcare.
The licensed cloud product AiContour has landed in more than 50 hospitals, serving over 2,000 people per week, and the medical cloud provider has been negotiating the terms with hundreds of hospitals, the company claimed.
While market demand and China's massive medical data pool are boosting the industry, regulatory headwinds represent serious risks for AI-driven healthcare companies. LinkingMed is one example from China's prolific Medical AI scene. To find the company's peers in China, refer to our healthcare report.