New medical technologies are helping healthcare professionals more accurately diagnose disease to improve clinical decision making.
AI and machine learning are emerging technologies that are fast becoming a major part of this revolution and their applications and limitations are undergoing intense exploration. Today, many healthcare companies are introducing revolutionary ideas in AI to change the future of healthcare and Resonance Health is one of them. Resonance Health is a leading healthcare company that specialises in the development and delivery of non-invasive medical imaging software and services.
Alison Laws, CEO at Resonance Health; “The foundation of Resonance Health’s success in the medical community is its combination of scientific rigour, excellence in quality and exceptional customer service. These principles drive the Company’s operations; from product development, education and profiling in the clinical community, as well as service delivery”.
Resonance has a goal to make high quality health care services available to all. AI can perform clinical diagnostics on medical images at levels equal to experienced clinicians. The company is focused on technical capabilities, limitations, and applications that can be realized within the next ten years. The Australian company is endorsed by leading physicians worldwide for consistently delivering accurate clinical measurements and indices that are essential to the effective management of multiple diseases.
Established in 2003, headquartered in Perth, Australia, Resonance Health began as a spin-out from the University of Western Australia (UWA) to commercialise the Company’s flagship product, FerriScan®. Resonance Health is an established world-leader in the quantification of iron loading with its flagship product FerriScan®, the gold standard in liver iron concentration quantification. Alison shares, “Our products are used globally by clinicians in the diagnosis and management of human diseases and by pharmaceutical companies for drug efficacy and validation. Resonance Health products and services have now been used in over 30 multi-site clinical trials.”
Resonance Health’s dedication to scientific rigour in the development and implementation of its analysis services has enabled the Company to achieve regulatory clearance (TGA, CE Mark, FDA) with 5 products (Software as Medical Devices) in the US, Europe and Australia. The core products are FerriScan® (quantification of liver iron concentration), HepaFat-Scan® (volumetric liver fat fraction), Cardiac T2* (a proxy for iron in the heart), Bone Marrow Scan (a proxy for iron in the bone marrow), and FerriSmart (an AI solution for liver iron concentration quantification, powered by FerriScan®).
This year the Company made a major advancement into the AI space with the development of FerriSmart®, its ground-breaking AI solution for the quantification of liver iron concentration. Ferrismart went from proof of concept and internal validation to clearance by regulators in the US, European and Australian markets within 12 months. Resonance Health now has a number of products in development using machine learning to provide artificial intelligence solutions for the diagnosis and management of other disease conditions. Alison explains, “Neural networks have enormous capacity to process complex data at extremely high speeds. They have very high reproducibility at the same time as providing cost effective solutions to the medical community in supporting clinical decisions.” Resonance Health, with its already large network of global users dramatically expanded this reach following the recent signing of a distribution agreement with Blackford Analysis, that allows Blackford to promote and distribute FerriSmart on all its AI platforms in all its territories. Deploying Ferrismart via channel partner platforms such as the Blackford Platform will allow FerriSmart to integrate seamlessly into radiology workflows for the efficient delivery of critical patient results to radiologists and clinicians. Integrating its products in this manner will enable Resonance Health to rapidly deploy and commercialise its extensive list of AI tools currently in its development pipeline. With its recent CE Mark and FDA clearance for FerriSmart, the product is now ready for commercial distribution in the United States, Europe, and other jurisdictions.
With a multi-disciplinary team of experts from multiple fields (including regulatory affairs, quality assurance, machine learning, statistical validation, documentation and software deployment), the company not only provides cost effective, scalable, high accuracy results to the healthcare industry, but also empowers patients worldwide. Alison explains, “Resonance Health works with patient advocacy groups globally in an effort to provide patients with access to the most up to date information on the options available to them for the management of their diseases.”
About the recent activities, the CEO reveals, “We have signed a Joint Venture Term Sheet with Perth Radiological Clinic (PRC) to use their data (CT and MRI data sets in various diseases) to train neural networks for the purpose of assessing the viability of development of several novel clinical screening tools. Talks are also ongoing with a number of other parties who own well-labelled, high quality data across a range of important diseases.”
The company frequently receives words of appreciation from its clientele. The CEO proudly shares the quote from Dr Yesim Aydinok, Professor of Paediatric Haematology, Ege University Children’s Hospital, Turkey: “FerriSmart is easy to use and gives almost instant liver iron concentration results without the need for time consuming data analysis. We have used it with patients with both moderate and severe iron loading. It has been trained from FerriScan® and the data gives us confidence in the results.” Similarly, Dr. Trang Nguyen Ngoc, Senior Radiologist, Bach Mai Hospital, Vietnam also praised the products of Resonance Health.