A strategic partnership between deepc, the AI Centre for Value-Based Healthcare (AI4VBH), King’s College London and Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust, London, aims to accelerate the adoption and deployment of radiology AI in the NHS.
Formed as a collaboration between King’s College London and Guy’s and St Thomas’ along with a consortium of NHS trusts, universities and UK and multinational industry partners, the AI4VBH was established in 2019 to realise the potential of AI to improve outcomes for patients, drive efficiencies and support the development of technologies to be used as products across the NHS and internationally.
The AI4VBH’s goal is to speed up and improve diagnosis and care across a large number of care pathways including dementia, heart failure and cancer. Over the past five years, the AI4VBH has developed numerous platforms to provide secure access to high quality electronic health data for the development of AI models and deployment of AI technology. deepc’s partnership with the AI4VBH will be focused on providing technology, resources and expertise to support the continued development of innovations and to improve the centre’s ability to deploy them in clinical settings.
The collaboration will also see deepc deploy its deepcOS platform to accelerate and scale adoption of radiology AI technologies efficiently, safely and securely across six NHS trusts, with the intention to expand to 10 trusts. The first to deploy deepcOS will be Guy’s and St Thomas’, King’s College Hospital NHS Foundation Trust, Lewisham and Greenwich NHS Trust, Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust, London, University Hospitals Sussex NHS Foundation Trust and East Kent Hospitals University NHS Foundation Trust.
Director of AI4VBH Professor Sebastien Ourselin said: “The AI4VBH aims to transform the potential of AI by providing a home to develop solutions and share guidance with hospitals looking to deploy these technologies. Our partnership with deepc will begin by helping six NHS trusts access more than 75 clinically-proven AI tools, but that is only the beginning. deepc will play a vital role in supporting the AI Centre for Value Based Healthcare’s future growth. Working together, we can make the NHS a true leader in the safe and effective use of AI, ultimately delivering benefits to our patients.”
Earlier this year, deepc opened its first UK office, located at the London Institute for Healthcare Engineering, and has partnered with the King’s Health Partners Digital Health Hub in London as well as BT in the UK to boost its digital health programme across the NHS.
The company has made four senior hires to support the partnership and ongoing growth in the UK. Alex King joins the company as chief revenue officer, bringing experience in scaling successful high technology companies. Director of strategic partnerships Craig Rhodes was in an executive healthcare role in a leading AI hardware infrastructure company. Adam Leps joins as head of professional services, with over 20 years of experience working in medical imaging, and Jorge Cardoso becomes the new AI strategist, bringing institutional knowledge as the cto of AI4VBH to his role.
Picture: AI4VBH director Professor Sebastien Ourselin, deputy chief executive of Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust Lawrence Tallon and deepc ceo and co-founder Dr Franz Pfister.
Read this report on page 8 of the January 2025 issue of RAD Magazine.