Sensyne Health signs licence agreement with Excalibur
By Josh White
Date: Tuesday 09 Feb 2021
(Sharecast News) - Clinical artificial intelligence (AI) company Sensyne Health has signed an exclusive licence and development agreement with Excalibur Healthcare Services, it announced on Tuesday, to apply Sensyne's 'MagnifEye' system for use with Excalibur's proprietary lateral flow rapid diagnostic tests across a range of indications, including its Covid-19 antigen test currently being marketed in the UK and Europe.
The AIM-traded firm said that in recent trials, the Excalibur Covid-19 antigen test had outperformed competing lateral flow tests with its speed, sensitivity and reliability.
It said the test had been approved by the UK regulator for mass population screening in symptomatic and asymptomatic people.
The MagnifEye system is Sensyne's proprietary software application available as both a smartphone app and a web application, using a cloud-based deep learning algorithm to automate the reading and analysis of different diagnostic tests including lateral flow tests.
It said the system had been adapted to Excalibur's already high-performance lateral flow antigen test.
The system trains users to administer a lateral flow test, then interpret that test and provide a shareable digital certificate that validates the training of the user, the test result and resulting health status.
It was expected that it would facilitate frequent testing, both for Covid-19 and a range of other conditions.
Excalibur would market the system alongside its current and future portfolio of lateral flow tests globally to customers in both the public and private sectors, with Sensyne acting as its critical clinical AI technology supplier, underpinning each new product.
Sensyne said Excalibur would pay a royalty each time the system was used to read a lateral flow test with a minimum guaranteed royalty sum of £4.8m payable over the first two years of the agreement.
The analytical capacity of the system at launch would match Excalibur's current lateral flow test manufacturing capacity of around three million tests per day, or 1.1 billion tests per year.
It said the initial focus would be on the use of MagnifEye for Covid-19 antigen testing, followed by its potential application in new lateral flow diagnostic tests for serology, cancer and other disease conditions that Excalibur was currently developing.
Beyond the agreement, Excalibur and Sensyne said they would seek to collaborate on the development of further projects that combine Excalibur's expertise in the development and marketing of high-quality diagnostic tests with Sensyne's expertise in the development and supply of software systems using clinical AI.
"The combination of Sensyne's clinical AI technology and Excalibur's test will, we believe, provide the most accurate diagnostic lateral flow test available in the world today," said chief executive officer Lord Drayson.
"This agreement reflects the UK's leadership position and expertise in life science and data science and underlines Sensyne's expertise in putting AI inside a growing range of innovations.
"With increasing global demand for rapid, easy to use diagnostic testing across a range of conditions, this agreement has the potential to create significant value from this fast growing $6bn market."
At 1424 GMT, shares in Sensyne Health were up 7.55% at 166.71p.
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