Celebrating ranking as a top project with Eurostars

Read our interview with Stine Mølgaard Sørensen, Co-founder and COO of Radiobotics, leaders of the top ranked X-AID project.

Eurostars saw the potential of Radiobotics AI in X-ray screening to entirely disrupt the radiology world. They achieved their top-ranking position with Eurostars by making routine musculoskeletal radiology and diagnostics more efficient with their breakthrough AI technology, effectively improving the quality and freeing up time for more challenging and complex diagnostics. Amid their great celebration, we interviewed their COO Stine Mølgaard and got a glimpse into just what this win means, how their innovative technology will change radiology as we currently know it, and the importance of the collaboration between Radiobotics and Catalyze in achieving this great feat.

Radiobotics celebrate in the light of securing Eurostars top-ranked project

How did it feel when Radiobotics found out about Eurostars and achieving this seal of excellence?

“When we got the rating, that we ranked first, we thought that somebody had hacked the system, that it was a mistake. It was almost too good to be true!

“Then actually, Jens Peter Vittrup from the Danish Innovation Fund told us over the phone that we got a really high rating, and then they checked through the comments from the reviewers and they had given them really high grades. In comparison with other Danish projects, Radiobotics was the highest rated one ever!

“Obviously, it’s a very, very good recognition of what we have been doing and how we have been framing our vision. There’s this feeling of, as a founder, we are now reaching confirmation of the work that we have been doing. We now have this great benefit of validation and recognition.”

The start of a visionary idea that led to an outpouring of public support

“How did it all start for Radiobotics? What were the seeds planted early on that led to the blossoming of this idea?”

“So, it all started in September 2017 when Radiobotics was founded, we’re actually quite young. It came out of an idea between Mads Jarner who is the CEO and Martin Axelsen who is the CSO, both co-founders, that had been studying together at the Technical University of Denmark. Mads then went to the Imperial College in London where he worked there in the orthopaedic research department and basically, that’s where he got the idea seeing that there is a need to optimize, especially the way we work with medical imaging and working with routine tasks in MSK (Musculoskeletal radiology). And this is the focus that we have today. First Mads and Martin began working on shaping the vision, which is over a year ago by now, and meanwhile, I was working with another tech startup, we started discussing their business.

“We eventually continued the discussion and later on, I was happy to join the team. At that time, we were seeking soft funding with the Danish government, seeking other applications for incubation projects and programs and continuing working on the algorithms. Just about the same time, Pavel [Lisouski] joined, who’s the CTO, and he built more on the prototype. In addition to Eurostars we secured SME Instrument I, EIT Health and some other Danish funding as well, so we’re really well supported by public authorities, only taking in a little commercial money as well. Basically, that led us to take on the Eurostars application. We’re now setting the stage for hiring more people, with the Eurostars funding we will for sure expand the team even more.”

“A machine will never get tired, a machine will never need a holiday.”

What were some risks attached with this, were there any concerns regarding the evolution of AI in MedTech?

“I’m confident that not only is our tech low-risk, but that it answers the question of how to minimize the built-up imagining workloads due to the startling low number of radiologists around the world. There are currently many vacant radiology positions globally and this technology is there to lessen the load on existing radiologists and to make sure that patients are getting the screenings they need, thoroughly double checked.

“Statistically and theoretically speaking, the AI machines can be trained to look at more X-rays than one single radiologist will manage to look at through an entire career. Radiobotics isn’t about replacing radiologists, but rather enabling them to do their job better and faster. We’d like to help, enhancing, and basically augmenting the work they’re already doing, in a sense that we put an intelligent overlay on top of the x-rays that they’re already looking at.

“For instance, you have to be very experienced to quickly see different things in an X-ray, and obviously, we can measure a lot of things within seconds and put an overlay on top of an x-ray that objectively shows these things. The first thing we like to do is to augment the X-ray that the radiologist is working with today and in the future, we wish to fully automate this, so the radiologist can spend their time on more valuable tasks.”

Catalyze’s role in achieving success for Radiobotics

How was the relationship working with Catalyze?

“The most perfect thing that you guys do is first of all that, you know all the details of everything we need to submit, and then you’re facilitating this process. So, I really think it is a privilege to have a company like yours to support throughout the process because there’s so many things as a small start-up that you don’t really have the resources to do. All of the requirements, of the documentation, and all of these things that you just wish that you could have somebody more qualified to support you with, you do that and you do that well.

“Eurostars was a gift for our side, and it was also a gift working with you. It’s complex, a Health Tech case is a complex thing, right? I also think that you took your time to understand it and helping writing the application in such a way that we couldn’t do ourselves. So, combining our great idea with your knowledge of how to communicate this to Eurostars, they understood what we were onto.”

For more information about Radiobotics: https://radiobotics.com/

To read more about Radiobotic’s successes, follow this link (Danish): Ny teknologi skal frigøre tid hos speciallægerne