FDA-cleared AI-based medical triage tool goes free to help busy radiology diagnostics departments

Medical startup Nines, which has developed an AI-based triage tool that has received clearance from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for use, is making that tool available for free to all until June 30 to help address the growing burden on radiology diagnostics departments as COVID-19 continues to reshape the healthcare landscape in the U.S.

NinesAI is designed to identify possible emergent cases of intracranial hemorrhage and mass effect conditions in patients, helping radiologists prioritize cases to review for further study. NinesAI is a supplemental tool, providing an early signal that some CT scans merit further investigation by trained radiologists, but even that can help tremendously in decreasing workload and eliminating manual early steps that are time-consuming.

This is a great example of where applied AI makes a lot of sense. Nines, which is co-founded by Udacity founder and Google self-driving car pioneer David Stave’s and county Dr. Alexander Kagen, NYC Mt. Sinai radiology site chair as its Chief Medical Officer, is using its machine learning expertise to develop software that can address the parts of the diagnostic process that are relatively rote and repeatable, freeing up time for radiologists to focus on the more specialized and harder to replicate work of final diagnostics and special cases.

The NinesAI tool is being made available free to Nines customers who use its teleradiology product, and also to any existing customers for use in-house at radiology practices with no additional costs.

Nines is the first company to receive FDA clearance for use of an AI tool in triaging intracranial hemorrhage and mass effect. The company was founded in 2017, and has raised $16.5 million thus far from investors including Accel and 8VC.