Artificial Intelligence (AI) specialist Sonrai Analytics has closed a £700,000 funding round to help towards delivering healthcare through big-data analysis.
The firm uses AI to develop bespoke applications and interfaces for healthcare organisations to filter and transform data sets in real time.
The platform delivers data visualisation and predictive analytics to workflows, which help accelerate organisational processes and improves performance.
Sonrai, which was established in 2018 by co-founders Dr Darragh McArt and Deva Senevirathne, is a spinout from QUBIS, the commercialisation arm of Queen’s University, Belfast.
RELATED: Meet the QUB women who founded spinout companies
Dr McArt commented: “Having emerged from the thriving research environment and state-of-the-art bioinformatics facilities at Queen’s Precision Medicine Centre, Sonrai is uniquely positioned to gain insights into modern day healthcare needs and couple this with the application of machine learning and AI to create digital information that helps improve patient treatment.
“Sonrai’s technology is already helping healthcare organisations to advance bioscience analytics in the US and Europe. This funding is an encouraging milestone that will further boost the development and commercialisation of our company.”
Brian McCaul, CEO of QUBIS added his delight and noted how the funding would ensure traction and employment in key skills for the NI economy, saying: “These are exactly the type of knowledge intensive jobs we need. That the company is gaining international customers even prior to this seed round demonstrates the potential that Sonrai has.”
RELATED: Researchers use AI to uncover powerful new antibiotics for the first time
Invest NI has also offered the company £48,000 of support towards the creation of eight highly skilled jobs in the areas of software engineering and data science.
The investment round has come from private entrepreneurs and local seed funders, led by Techstart Ventures, alongside QUBIS and Co-Fund NI.
Techstart NI and Co-Fund II are part of Invest Northern Ireland’s Access to Finance portfolio. Both are part financed by the European Regional Development Fund under the EU investment for Growth and Jobs Programme 2014-2020.
RELATED: EU to produce new regulatory framework and funding for AI development
