Round up: AI partnership to unlock real-world insights on Alzheimer’s care, and more

Health Tech World explores the latest business developments in the world of health technology.

Partner to unlock real-world Insights on Alzheimer’s Disease care using AI

AI and real-world data company Century Health, and Memory Treatment Centers, specialising in neurocognitive disease care, will enter a partnership to transform unstructured clinical data into research-grade real-world evidence.

The partnership will enable rapid understanding of disease progression and how novel therapies for Alzheimer’s disease perform outside clinical trials.

 

The Century Health Abstraction and Retrieval Model (CHARM) will extract and standardise key variables, such as treatment response, cognitive assessments, genetic risk factors like Apolipoprotein E (APOE), and imaging findings like amyloid-related imaging abnormalities (ARIA).

Century Health specialises in extracting clinical insights from unstructured clinical notes and imaging data, reducing the need for costly new data collection.

These structured, de-identified data enable analysis of treatment effectiveness and safety across diverse patient populations, supporting hypothesis generation and post-market research at scale.

All analyses use de-identified data and adhere to strict HIPAA-compliant privacy safeguards.

The resulting high-quality, compliant datasets can be used by clinicians, investigators, and pharmaceutical partners to assess treatment effectiveness, real-world safety, and value across populations.

This evidence helps bridge real-world outcomes to research and access decisions, enabling continuous learning about safety, effectiveness, and patient impact across the treatment lifecycle.

LIXTE Biotechnology acquires Liora Technologies’ proprietary proton therapy platform

LIXTE Biotechnology Holdings, a biotech company focused on advancing cancer treatments, today announced it has completed the acquisition of Liora Technologies Europe, a UK-based company pioneering electronically controlled proton therapy systems for treating tumours in various types of cancers.

Liora will become a wholly owned subsidiary of LIXTE. The acquisition includes Liora’s proprietary flagship technology LiGHT System (Linac for Image Guided Hadron Therapy), which provides significant advantages over currently available technologies for treating tumors with proton therapy.

Liora’s LiGHT system is installed at STFC’s Daresbury Laboratory, which will be providing resources to develop a center of excellence for proton therapy treatment using the LiGHT system.

“The acquisition of Liora represents our entry in the radiotherapy segment of cancer care and marks a significant step in LIXTE’s corporate growth and development as we aim to fulfill our mission of treating cancer with cutting-edge technologies,” said Geordan Pursglove, CEO of LIXTE.

“We believe that Liora’s flagship technology LiGHT System has significant global potential and could well set a new gold standard in cancer care, delivering high-precision proton therapy that is scalable and clinically versatile.”

Professor Steve Myers, former director of accelerators and technology at CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, said: “The highly adaptable LiGHT System provides a proton beam allowing the delivery of very high dose rates to deep-seated tumors.

“In addition to the unique biological effects, it will also greatly reduce the installation cost and the number of treatment sessions needed, compared to current technologies, and is expected to significantly increase the number of patients that a treatment center can serve.

“With LIXTE’s acquisition of Liora’s assets, I am excited to see how the Company advances and scales this technology.

“I believe there is tremendous potential to turn this into a transformative new standard in cancer treatment.”

“Our plan is to bring the LiGHT system to the forefront of modern cancer treatment and eventually enable LIXTE to pursue a recurring revenue model through jointly operated treatment centres.

“The addition of Liora also represents an excellent complement to the pharmaceutical side of our business and our ongoing clinical trials with LB-100 for Ovarian Clear Cell Carcinoma and Metastatic Colon Cancer,” Pursglove said.

Hyperfine awarded us$3.7m grant to advance global brain health

Hyperfine, a health technology company that has developed the first FDA-cleared AI-powered portable MRI system for the brain – the Swoop system – has announced the strengthening of the its initiatives to improve global brain health in underserved settings through a Gates Foundation grant of US$3.7m.

The funding supports activities into 2028 and will be used to expand and accelerate technical innovation with AI-powered portable MRI for neonatal scanning to conduct objective evaluation of neurodevelopment among infants and young children in resource-constrained settings.

The UNITY project, led by King’s College London (King’s), is using the accessible and scalable Swoop system with a goal to ultimately enable more effective interventions that will improve child brain development and health globally.

“Through our ongoing partnership with Hyperfine, we are now imaging the developing brain where it was once impossible,” said Professor Steve Williams of King’s College London, principal investigator for the UNITY research initiative.

“This collaboration will fill a critical role in providing a low-cost, scalable method for directly evaluating neurodevelopment – ensuring more children have the chance not only to survive but thrive.

“Hyperfine brings all the relevant expertise needed for this investment to be successful.

“With the Swoop system, we have already performed more than 10,000 examinations and scanned more than 6,000 babies and infants across five continents, demonstrating both the scalability and the life-changing potential of this technology.”

This grant supports further work through the UNITY project – an initiative to study environmental influences on early brain maturation and the impact of malnutrition, infection, inflammation, and birth complications on neurodevelopment using portable MR imaging.

This new phase takes the next step to focus on helping optimise treatment in underserved countries.

The UNITY research initiative is composed of more than 40 academic and clinical centers across low-, middle-, and high-income countries, including Malawi, Ghana, Zambia, Kenya, India, and Pakistan.

With this grant, the collaboration with King’s aims to develop AI-based pipelines to improve image clarity and diagnostic reliability for neonatal patients, where motion and low signal-to-noise ratio present unique challenges.

These targeted improvements are designed to deliver consistent and improved image quality for neonatal scanning that can advance Swoop® system use globally.

NICE recommends advanced AI-powered software for spine assessment

NANO-X Imaging LTD has announced that its deep-learning medical imaging analytics subsidiary, Nanox.AI has secured the recommendation of the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE).

NICE has included both Nanox AI bone solutions in an Early Value Assessment at NHS hospitals in the UK.

NICE has included Nanox AI’s HealthVCF and HealthOST, along with three other AI solutions, for evaluation in NHS hospitals to provide evidence of how AI can help support the detection of vertebral fragility fractures (VFFs), while further data on their benefits is gathered and assessed.

HealthOST is the evolution of HealthVCF, which was evaluated in the AI-enabled Detection of OsteoPorosis (ADOPT) study.

“AI technologies can help healthcare professionals spot VFFs on X-ray images and CT scans involving the spine, that are done for unrelated conditions (opportunistic detection),” NICE stated in its Health Technology Evaluation.

“This could help identify more people with a vertebral fragility fracture who need treatment to improve their quality of life and reduce the risk of future fractures.”

Kassim Javaid, professor of osteoporosis and adult rare bone disease, University of Oxford, said: “Nanox.AI’s bone solutions represent a major step forward in transforming how we detect vertebral fragility fractures and intervene earlier in osteoporosis.

“The ADOPT trial has shown the impact of proactive identification, and these AI tools can help bring that approach into routine NHS care.

“With Oxford securing an additional three years to use the HealthOST solution, we are further strengthening our ability to deliver earlier, data-driven insights.

“I’m delighted that NICE has recognized the potential of these tools through the Early Value Assessment, enabling us to generate the evidence needed to bring earlier detection to many more patients.”

The tools may be used for a period of three years as part of evidence generation and are eligible for core NHS funding.