Infermedica 2017: Year in review

Healthcare companies are ready to embrace artificial intelligence. A step by step implementation and  patience are the key ingredients. Each successive implementation is much easier than the one before. There is no better sales tool than a successful case study and a reference from a well-known company. These are our key conclusions from 2017.

What pleases me the most is when new people join our team. In 2017 we hired seven people for our main team (six in Wrocław and one in Malta) and three new doctors for the medical team. Altogether there are now over 30 of us – programmers, data science specialists and doctors.

Last year was very successful in terms of commercial implementations. We signed and successfully completed several key pilot projects in the insurance and health industry. The Allianz Worldwide Care decided to employ technology provided by Infermedica; after our successful pilot project with French Allianz Partners, work on a further roll-out is underway. Dovera, the largest Slovak insurance company, also chose us to provide technology for checking patient symptoms. They were the first to put in place such a solution in Slovakia.

During the year we also carried out pilot programs with two Polish medical insurance companies, and we are pleased that Polish business also sees the potential of our technology. A few other implementations that we began in 2017 are not yet public, but we hope to report on them soon. I have no doubt that we were able to sign certain contracts only because our team displayed exceptional commitment and we devoted a great deal of time to build friendly relationships with the clients.

“To date, we have conducted over three million diagnostic interviews with patients.”

Our business is exclusively B2B. Medical and insurance companies are our focus, but we also license our solutions to IT companies and medical startups. At the moment, several dozen clients in more than a dozen countries are using our products. To date, we have conducted over three million diagnostic interviews with patients. 2017 brought about a 400% increase in income and we will strive to keep this pace.

Over the last year we also significantly improved our diagnostic engine, raising its diagnostic efficacy as well as enhancing user experience. In cooperation with physicians representing our clients, system audits were carried out, where doctors tested our system on various patient cases. Each of the reviews resulted in a green light for production implementation. This year, we are planning scientific research with an independent university unit, which will allow us to measure the diagnostic efficacy of the system and make it public.

“2017 brought about a 400% increase in income and we will strive to keep this pace.”

We invested a lot of time in developing technology for processing and understanding natural language. We have no doubt that in the future, voice assistants such as Siri will be used for a preliminary conversation preceding a doctor’s appointment. In 2017 we succeeded in releasing the first version of a system running on Amazon Alexa.

At the end of the year, we also completed the internal round of financing, which will allow us to start building a sales team and to position our company in the international market. We are planning a series A round for the end of 2018.

We have ambitious goals for the New Year ahead – we are preparing for new implementations, planning a marketing campaign, and initiating outbound sales. My wish for all entrepreneurs in 2018 is good health, perseverance, and the realization of all of their plans.

I would like to thank all our kind supporters, especially our great team, shareholders and partners. Nothing would be possible without your faith and determination.