INTELLIGENT VERTICAL: HEALTHCARE
ago. Ken Mulvany, Founder and Chairman of
BenevolentAI, commented: “We have built
an artificial intelligence technology that can
read and understand the world’s biomedical
information, then perform complex reasoning
to inform us of things about disease
never before understood. This enables us
to discover new medicines like no other
organisation and drive cures for diseases that
were previously untreatable.
The acquisition has expanded our scale and
capability overnight and created something
that previously did not exist: an AI company
truly integrated across every stage of the
drug development process.”
BenevolentAI is the global leader in the
development and application of AI for
scientific innovation. It is the largest
private AI company in Europe and one of
the world’s top five private AI companies.
The company has built a proprietary AI
technology platform that ingests and
processes knowledge from any source
of vast complex scientific data and then
analyses, reasons and extracts knowledge.
The technology enables BenevolentAI to
generate new scientific insights very quickly
at a huge scale.
In the first instance, BenevolentAI has
applied its technology to accelerate the
discovery of new medicines creating the
world’s richest bioscience knowledge
graph containing well over 1bn meaningful
relationships specific to drug discovery.
The technology enables a completely
unique understanding of disease and can
deliver significantly higher success rates in
discovering new medicines and potential
cures for disease. The company has made
significant progress in accelerating drug
development, including the initiation of
19 validated drug research programmes
and a breakthrough in ALS in 2017, where
positive results for its AI-derived invention
was announced. BenevolentAI has entered
into significant license agreements with
some of the world’s largest pharmaceutical
companies and began its first Phase IIb
clinical study in 2017.
While the pharmaceutical sector is an area
of tremendous opportunity, there is also
the opportunity to apply its technology
to other science-based industries
underpinning many of the world’s most
valuable markets such as advanced
materials, agriculture, nutraceuticals and
animal health. Initially, BenevolentAI will
start its exploration into other scientific
verticals by looking at how its technology
can be applied to the multi-billion-dollar
energy storage market. n
ABBOTT’S APP FOR FREESTYLE LIBRE
SYSTEM NOW AVAILABLE IN EUROPE
A
bbott has announced the FreeStyle
LibreLink app is now available in
Europe for use with compatible
smartphones (both iPhone and Android).
People with diabetes living in Europe and
using the FreeStyle Libre system are now
able to access glucose data directly from
their smartphones, eliminating the need to
carry the separate FreeStyle Libre reader (a
handheld device used to scan the FreeStyle
Libre sensor to get a glucose result). Since
2015, the app offering for the FreeStyle
Libre system was only available for Android
users but now the FreeStyle LibreLink app is
also compatible with iPhone.
Utilising their phone’s near-field
communication (NFC), the FreeStyle
LibreLink app enables users to hold their
smartphone near their FreeStyle Libre sensor
to capture and view their real-time glucose
levels, their eight-hour glucose history and
how their glucose is currently changing.
Users can also easily add notes to track food,
insulin use, medication and exercise.
“We’re committed to bringing life-
96
INTELLIGENTCIO
changing technology and tools to liberate
people from the many hassles of diabetes
management,” said Jared Watkin, Senior
Vice President, Diabetes Care, Abbott. “The
FreeStyle LibreLink app is a digital health
tool that integrates glucose data directly
on a smartphone so everything is all in
one place. This is another step forward in
making glucose monitoring seamlessly fit
into a patient’s daily lifestyle, helping them
live a fuller, healthier life.”
Customers using the FreeStyle LibreLink
app will have access to several updates
and new features in comparison to the
FreeStyle Libre reader, including: a larger,
high-resolution display, text-to-speech
capabilities for glucose readings (when
enabled), the ability to log smaller doses
of insulin (0.1 unit versus 0.5 units) and
support for 26 languages. While the app
can replace the reader, the two can also be
used in combination with one another.
FreeStyle LibreLink users also have the
option to share their information with their
healthcare professional and caregivers
through LibreView and LibreLinkUp, other
digital health tools that are also part of the
FreeStyle Libre platform:
• LibreView is a secure, cloud-based
diabetes management system
that enables the patient to share
their glucose insights with their
healthcare provider.
• LibreLinkUp is an app that enables
caregivers of people living with diabetes
in Europe to remotely monitor their
loved ones’ glucose readings.
Abbott’s FreeStyle LibreLink app is
available free of charge for both
iPhone and Android, initially in 12
European countries including Austria,
Belgium, Finland, France, Germany,
Ireland, Italy, Spain, Sweden, Netherlands,
Switzerland and the United Kingdom.
Abbott is aiming to provide a mobile
app solution for FreeStyle Libre users
outside of Europe, based on in-country
regulatory approvals. n
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