The Industrial Centre for Artificial Intelligence Research in Digital Diagnostics (iCAIRD) recently won the Innovative Collaboration Award at the 2021 Scotland’s Life Sciences Annual Awards.
Hosted virtually at the end of March, the event recognises and celebrates achievements in the life sciences industries – across a broad range of areas, stretching from innovation to skills development and business leadership. Nominees also come from an array of fields, including biology, biotechnology, academia and industry investors.
A winner for its ‘innovative collaboration’, iCAIRD is one of only five AI Centres created with funding from the UKRI Innovate UK Industrial Strategy Challenge Fund (ISCF). Of those five UKRI AI Centres, iCAIRD is the only one currently working in both radiology and pathology.
Its aim is to develop AI tools to support clinical decision-making, as well as improve health infrastructure and gain insights from health data to improve patient outcomes. It’s hoped this will lead to the development of a ‘National Centre for AI research, development, evaluation and deployment in the health and social care sector in Scotland’.
Situated at the University of Glasgow Clinical Innovation Zone within the Queen Elizabeth University Hospital Campus, iCAIRD involves over 16 collaborators from across Scotland. This includes partners in industry, academia and the NHS, such as NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde, NHS Grampian, NHS Lothian and National Services Scotland, as well as the universities of Aberdeen, Edinburgh, Glasgow, and St Andrews.
According to the University of Glasgow, industry expertise and leadership also comes from Canon Medical Research Europe and Royal Philips, with technology partners the EPCC – a supercomputing centre, InterSystems and Nvidia.
The programme is also currently working with six SMEs. These include projects for the development of AI in radiology for acute stroke treatment assessment, breast screening, chest X-Ray triage and COVID-19 diagnostic and treatment assessment triage. In pathology, teams are working on initiatives to fully digitise pathology at NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde, and to establish a digital national pathology research archive service and develop AI tools for gynaecological cancer screening.
When accepting the award for the team, iCAIRDs’ Chief Technology Officer James Blackwood, said: “iCAIRD is a national programme which focuses that ecosystem on delivering AI solutions for digital diagnostics. Diversity, inclusivity, creativity and collaboration lie at the heart of the programme.”
Previous iCARID achievements include the deployment of a national secure analytical machine learning platform (SHAIP), and the extraction of imaging and non-imaging data at scale from local and national NHS data repositories.
Find out more about iCAIRD by visiting the programme website, or read about 2021 Scotland’s Life Sciences Awards winners online.
