Blog

The “Flight Simulator for healthcare and life sciences” addresses staffing pressures, continuous learning demands and the pace of innovation in life sciences

Manchester, February 2^nd, 2023 – Re:course AI, the artificial intelligence (AI) flight simulator for healthcare training, has secured $4.3 million in seed funding in a round led by Par Equity and including Northern Gritstone, the GMC Life Sciences Fund By Praetura, Rob Wood (founder of STEM Healthcare) and the founders of Current Health. 

The company is looking to expand its engineering team and enter new markets at a time when the global healthcare industry must urgently address chronic staffing shortages, the accelerating pace of innovation in life sciences and expectations for improved patient outcomes. Already integrated into healthcare institutions in the US and UK, Re:course AI will develop the skills of doctors and nurses at scale, eventually producing new clinicians autonomously using generative AI models to give digital humans and virtual tutors the ability to hold natural conversations with healthcare professionals.

“Re:course AI has the potential to disrupt how the healthcare professionals of the future are trained, as the demand for virtual AI-based training is growing,” Aidan MacMillan, Senior Investment Manager, Par Equity. “The medical and AI capability within Re:course AI has enabled a unique approach to training for healthcare and life sciences professionals which can handle a wide variety of real world scenarios. We are excited to be supporting Scott, Maksim and the rest of the Re:course AI team at this important step in their journey.”

Flight simulator for healthcare and life sciences

Re:course AI was founded by Dr. Scott Martin, CEO and Dr. Maksim Belousov, CTO who describe the company as the “flight simulator for healthcare and life sciences.” It uses AI models and digital human avatars in virtual training exercises to provide hospital doctors, GPs, nurses and other healthcare professionals with realistic patient interactions and automatic feedback. The AI-powered digital human platform can provide training on any scenario as Re:course AI has teamed up with clinical experts to build up a bank of dozens of avatars with different conditions covering every demographic, thus addressing issues around bias. Tutors can also support medical professionals examining multiple conditions, almost acting like a co-pilot to steer individuals through training. 

“The strength of Re:course AI’s proposition and the interest it has attracted from the venture capital community underlines how dynamic the tech start-up scene is in the Manchester-Leeds-Sheffield region,” said Northern Gritstone CEO Duncan Johnson. “Re:course AI builds on the strong tradition in artificial intelligence in Manchester that started with the ‘Father of AI’ Alan Turing. We are delighted to be supporting the company’s ambition to fundamentally improve healthcare training and show the commercial potential of the North of England on the world stage.”

Reimagining the potential of healthcare professionals

With all the pressures and cost constraints facing healthcare providers around the world, Re:course AI's digital human platform provides more capacity and scalability at a time when practitioners are immensely time-poor. The platform is delivered as standardised training to give greater confidence in the consistency of diagnosis and treatment and early indications from evaluation of the technology show it significantly improves the performance of clinicians during patient encounters in role-playing exercises ranging from diagnosing rare cancers to assessing mental health conditions.

“The aviation industry is another sector where safety is of paramount importance, and it has led the way in demonstrating the value of simulated training to maintain and update the skills of pilots,” said Dr. Scott Martin, CEO and co-founder, Re:course AI. “We believe AI will augment, not replace, the healthcare workforce of the future and we have already demonstrated in our customer implementations that Re:course AI can be the flight simulator for medical training. We are delighted to receive the backing of our investors, as we are keen to expand our team to respond to growing global demand for our digital human platform.”

Re:course AI has a joint collaboration with USC Keck School of Medicine, the prestigious US Medical Centre (home of the first “Standardized Patient Actor”) which is exploring the use of its technology in medical training and the company has received $1.2m from NHS England SBRI Healthcare for cutting edge simulations to develop critical communication and decision making skills in healthcare professionals faster and at lower cost. It is also conducting a pilot with the NHS in South Yorkshire across Primary Care clinicians and it has worked with the Ministry of Defence on medical training for clinicians to support mental health outcomes in military personnel and veterans. In the US, Western Michigan University School of Medicine has integrated Re:course AI into its undergraduate and continuing medical education courses to provide anytime access to fully conversational, voice-interactive Digital Human Patient avatars. 

“The Re:course AI team has proven that their digital human platform can help healthcare professionals maximise the time they spend on their clinical development” said Sim Singh-Landa, Head of the GMC Life Sciences Fund By Praetura supported by GMCA, Cheshire & Warrington LEP and Bruntwood SciTech. “Re:course AI put safety and ethics at the heart of their development process and have been welcomed by the healthcare community. At Praetura, we will be offering our ‘More Than Money’ support as this exciting Manchester-based team now looks to scale, helping connect them with industry professionals who can support the company’s growth.”

The Re:course AI platform is also applicable in Life Sciences where innovation is accelerating faster than ever in areas such as drug discovery. These developments are outpacing the ability of healthcare professionals to stay up-to-date, creating an urgent need to speed up the process of clinical learning.

‍

Editor's Notes

About Re:course AI

Re:course AI is a deep-tech company on a mission to accelerate human performance using AI-powered virtual training. Founded by Dr. Scott Martin, Clinical Entrepreneur Fellow at NHS England and CEO at Re:course AI, and Maksim Belousov, PhD in Artificial Intelligence/Natural Language Processing and CTO, the team has developed a flight simulator using fully conversational, voice-interactive Digital Human Patient avatars that provide a unique opportunity to support medical professionals by bridging the gap between traditional training and real-world scenarios. The Digital Human Platform provides more capacity and scalability for both on-going training and medical education qualifications reducing time to mastery and delivered as standardized training to give greater confidence in the consistency of diagnosis and treatment, ultimately improving the patient experience and outcomes.

For more information please go to: https://www.recourseai.com/

‍

Media contact

Cairbre Sugrue

Sugrue Comms for Re:course AI

cairbre@sugruecomms.com

+44 7502 203 769

‍

About Par Equity

Par Equity is a leading venture capital firm, based in Edinburgh, investing in innovative technology companies with high growth potential in the North of the UK. Since it was founded in 2008, Par Equity has backed 77 companies with a core focus across climate tech, health tech and industry 4.0.

Past successes include Current Health (sold to Best BuyHealth in 2021), DeltaDNA (sold to Unity Technology in 2019), SymphonicSoftware (sold to Ping Identity in 2020), Optoscribe (sold to Intel Corporation in 2022), ICS Learn and Dukosi, whilst its existing portfolio is made up of rising tech stars across the north of the UK such as Cyacomb, Speech Graphics, Nova Pangaea Technologies, SamsonVT, Fuuse and Cumulus Neuroscience.

For more information please go to: https://www.parequity.com/

‍

About Northern Gritstone

Northern Gritstone is a ground-breaking new investment company based in the north of England, founded by the Universities of Leeds, Manchester and Sheffield, three of the UK’s leading educational research establishments.

It intends to be one of the largest investors into academic spinouts and IP-rich businesses in the UK dedicated to financing companies in some of the UK’s fastest growing sectors such as advanced materials, energy, health technology and cognitive computation.

For more information please go to: https://northern-gritstone.com/

‍

About Praetura Ventures

Praetura Ventures is a Manchester-based venture capital firm which invests in early-stage, high-growth businesses across the UK, with a particular focus on supporting entrepreneurs across the North of England. 

Praetura Ventures is committed to adding value post-investment and providing the ‘more than money’ support that businesses need to grow, including additional expertise, resources, networks and guidance to its investee companies. 

Since 2019, Praetura Ventures has backed 33 companies, including North West headquartered businesses Culture Shift, XR Games and Peak. 

The firm also has a Venture Partner programme - an innovative and collaborative initiative that is aimed at experienced, connected and successful individuals who have a desire to add value and potentially provide mentorship, advice, introductions and investment to the next generation of entrepreneurs. In just a few months, the firm has grown its Venture Partnerbase to 85+ members, typically C-suite level individuals. 

Learn more at praeturaventures.com and LinkedIn. 

‍

About the GMC Life Sciences Fund by Praetura

The ‘GMC Life Sciences Fund by Praetura’ aims to bolster Greater Manchester and Cheshire and Warrington’s flourishing life sciences sector.

The fund, raised by partners including Bruntwood SciTech, Greater Manchester Combined Authority (GMCA) and Cheshire and Warrington Local Enterprise Partnership (LEP), will be deployed by Manchester-based Praetura Ventures.

The fund was launched in 2022 with an initial £20m with the aim of supporting innovation and growing the region’s knowledge economy, creating more skilled jobs and helping businesses to expand internationally.

The ‘GMC Life Sciences Fund By Praetura’ will offer investment of £50k-£2m to early-stage businesses and SMEs that are located in Greater Manchester, Cheshire or Warrington, or those that commit to relocating their operations there. The fund will be launched with an initial £20m with the aim of supporting innovation, creating more skilled jobs and helping businesses to expand internationally.

Learn more about the fund here.

‍