How an innovative healthtech company from Argentina set up HQ in the UK
By Mark Ramondt, co-founder of MultiplAI Health
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Cardiovascular diseases are the leading cause of mortality globally, responsible for almost 18 million deaths per year, or 31% of deaths worldwide, according to the World Health Organization. With this information in mind and the 20+ years of scientific and medical experience of our co-founders, Santiago Miriuka and Charlie Luzzani, we decided it was time to think outside the box to solve the main challenges when it came to cardiovascular diseases: diagnosis and prognosis estimation.
Science has mapped out the risk factors that can complicate a cardiovascular disease. A person´s health outlook is extremely complex as it relies on several factors that change from one person to the next. That is why is difficult to have a specific diagnosis without a lot of testing which can be time-consuming and expensive. Over 75% of the world’s population today does not have access to modern diagnostic services. We want to change this. We know that early diagnosis increases the chances for successful interventions but, currently, cardiovascular science still trusts single biochemical markers such as cholesterol.
What MultiplAI created is a blood test based on the most state-of-the-art innovation in artificial intelligence to identify molecular variances in the blood that indicate an increased risk of a cardiovascular event. Technology allows us to offer a whole blood liquid biopsy-screening test with high diagnostic accuracy at a fraction of the cost of existing options.
Our patented RNAseq data transformation process makes it possible to represent the incredible complexity of RNA in highly efficient formats ideal for algorithmic analysis. Imagine measuring all blood RNA changes that a cardiac risk factor may induce at the same time. This creates a powerful, deep, and accurate “superbiomarker” that can transform cardiovascular disease diagnosis, prognosis, and treatment driving us towards true cardiovascular precision medicine.
The company started in Argentina in 2019 and earlier this year, we decided to look for markets that could help us take the company to a global stage. London became an obvious choice because it is one of the premier biotech, AI, and genomics hubs in the world, attracting world-class scientific talent and potential partners that are needed to succeed in our efforts to make cardiovascular disease diagnosis and prognosis universally accessible to anyone, anywhere.
In 2020, UK biotech companies raised a record £2.3 billion, and the UK was third in the world for healthtech investments (behind USA and China). The healthtech landscape is growing so fast that they can already map out 100 companies working in the sector. Furthermore, we were one of nine companies selected globally to be part of the Illumina Acceleration Program, based in Cambridge, UK.
The Department for International Trade team in the British Embassy in Buenos Aires supported us in this journey with expert sector advice and clarifying the processes for setting up and moving our team to the UK, which facilitated and sped things up for our expansion.
As technology matures and disrupts the healthcare industry, it will support the implementation of accessible, affordable, and sustainable care while becoming more and more personalized and patient-centric. Advances in areas such as artificial intelligence and computational biology will make health a more universally accessible subject and save more lives. The move to the UK will put MultiplAI Health at the heart of a vibrant life science ecosystem to push the frontier of innovative health technologies with global potential.
