AIATELLA uses AI to revolutionize radiology

Cardiovascular diseases are the world’s leading cause of death and have been for over a hundred years – despite all the research and technology.

There must be something to resolve this situation.

– That was the idea behind my research and then later in our work when we started to solve the problem, explains Jack Parker, co-founder and CEO of AIATELLA, a startup building cloud-based software to automatically analyse medical imaging, including MRI and CT scans.

Parker has studied biomedical science in the UK. His studies led him to the NHS (National Health Service) and clinical research.

– The research involved clinical work with the patients. I started shadowing some doctors, working with them and observing cardiological surgery.

Pretty soon Parker noticed that the radiologists are facing unprecedented volumes of images but have little tools to meet the demand. These kinds of situations lead to delayed diagnoses.

With these observations in his mind Parker participated in a hackathon in Helsinki and met Onni Eriksson, CTO and co-founder of AIATELLA. Eriksson has a technical background, and he had already started a 3D design company.

Match made in heaven? You could say so, because the duo noticed quickly that together they could have a big impact on the lives of millions of people.

Parker and Eriksson founded their startup, AIATELLA, over two years ago, aiming to revolutionize healthcare by automating slow and manual tasks in the analysis of medical imaging with the help of artificial intelligence (AI).

Cardiovascular analysis of the aorta was an obvious choice to start with. For Parker, working in cardiovascular diseases felt very personal as his father had just had a heart attack.

Credibility the most important thing

Parker and Eriksson are sitting in a café at Maria 01, the leading startup campus in the Nordics and an entrepreneurial community in the center of Helsinki. AIATELLA is growing and moving into these larger premises today.

The location at Maria 01 is great and so is the atmosphere with other startups. Parker and Eriksson also like the fact that Maria 01 is located in a building that used to be a hospital.  

Eriksson says that although the duo works together closely, some responsibilities are very split.

– Building the code base and handling the development team is very much on my side, and Jack is handling the clinical side and regulatory projects. On the overall investment or strategic things, we pretty much work together.

Parker says that they have their CTO and CEO hats, but their main roles are founders of AIATELLA.

A big and very crucial issue with every startup is the funding. AIATELLA’s first investor was Parker’s mentor, an American doctor.

– We discussed the idea very early on with him. And he obviously believed in us although we had just a few minutes of time with him.

Soon, AIATELLA also received some funding from the Business Finland Tempo funding. Tempo is intended for under 5 years old startup companies with a new product or service idea.

Little by little they found more investors. Many of them were their advisors or people that they had been asking for sparring along the way.

– We believe that the most important thing is often something else than just the money. For us, the importance of having doctors and professionals believe in us is the biggest thing, Parker says.

From the very beginning, Parker and Eriksson wanted to show that their product is as reliable as the professionals’ diagnoses.

– And that’s what we proved with the first POC (proof of concept) trial, Parker says.

Pilots in the UK and the USA

Most of AIATELLA’s connections and pilots are at the moment in the UK, but the company’s solution has pilots starting also with multiple hospitals in the USA.

In Finland, AIATELLA has co-operation with private sector’s health company Pihlajalinna.

When Parker and Eriksson are asked about scaling their solution to be used in the analysis of medical imaging of other illnesses, their answer is yes. But first they want to focus on cardiovascular diseases.

– Cardiovascular is the hardest one and that’s why there are no kind of existing solutions to completely automate all the measurements and comparisons, Parker explains.

AIATELLA aims to scale the whole cardiovascular system and change the current situation from reactive medicine into preventative medicine.

– These diseases aren’t usually found before people have a stroke, a heart attack or an aortic aneurysm. Unfortunately, a lot of cardiovascular diseases can’t really be diagnosed and found without medical imaging.

Parker refers to the World Health Organisation’s estimates: 80 per cent of premature cardiovascular deaths could be prevented with early detection and treatment.

– If detected in early stages, there isn’t necessarily even need for surgery. It can mean that you must change your diet, do more exercise or start taking medicine.

But surely, they can’t scan the whole population, right?

Parker and Eriksson tell that in fact that could happen. They are not allowed to name the country yet, but AIATELLA has been asked to scan the country’s whole population.

Parker adds that using ultrasound the scanning is fairly cheap.

– Globally, the problem is not the number of machines, it’s the amount of people reading the images.

Contributing to make a difference

AI has a lot of potential in healthcare. However, most of the medical AI companies are having a hard time selling the solutions. According to Parker and Eriksson, any AI solution has to be started with generating evidence and working closely together with the healthcare professionals.

– It is also very important that your AI is explainable. You have to show how AI can help you to increase the accuracy, speed up the diagnosis and solve the parts of the job that nobody really wants to do. And not ever talk about AI possibly replacing the professionals. Then you can get the trust from the doctors.

How about competition in their field with the AI?

– There’s always competition. Directly with what we are doing, no.

Eriksson explains that there are semi-automated tools in the market. They don’t fix the problem of increasing the efficiency, like getting rid of the manual measurement processes, which are the slowest part of the analysis.

At the moment AIATELLA’s founders are highly motivated. They want to make as much impact as possible and save lives with their work.

– We want to do something good in the world. We could go and work for a marketplace company or something like that. But today we can go home and think about how we have contributed to making a difference.