AI professor tips off entrepreneurs:  “It’s a huge market.”   

There’s a medical breakthrough that could mean business in a huge market for entrepreneurs with deep pockets prepared to plan for the long term.

In five years’ time, thousands of dementia sufferers across the UK could have Artificial Intelligence systems fitted in their homes so doctors can keep tabs on their condition and also keep them out of hospital, according to Professor Payam Barnaghi, of Imperial College, London, one of the country’s leading AI experts.

A million dementia patients occupy a quarter of hospital beds.

In an ageing population, there are around a million dementia patients in the UK and they occupy a quarter of hospital  beds.  

One-in-five of these hospital admissions are for minor preventable problems like urinary tract infections, falls and dehydration, according to research. 

£20 million research underway.

The AI system being tested in 120 homes of people in their 60s in the UK, will try to work out a way to prevent this by gathering data, so doctors can intervene with medication or treatment. It is part of a £20 million research programme overseen by the UK Dementia Research Unit made up of six of the country’s finest national discovery science centres including Imperial College.

Sensors under the mattress.  

The system puts sensors on doors, stairs, fridges and kitchen appliances  to gather data on a person’s movement. There is even a sensor that goes under your mattress that monitors your heart rate, the depth of your sleep, how many times you get up in the night and your breathing rate.

“When you are asleep your breathing rate usually drops a little, but if you have a respiratory infection that breathing rate doesn’t drop, so you can look at the changes,” says Barnaghi.

Counting how often you get up at night.

“Maybe because they have a urinary tract infection and they wake up at night and go to the bathroom. You can create an algorithm that counts how many times they go to the bathroom then you can check if it deviates from the norm,” he says.

The data is fed into an AI system, in a cloud, and any sudden change can draw action from nurses and doctors to prevent a patient from ending up in hospital. Most dementia patients prefer to stay at home.  

How often do you use your kettle ?

“We use this combination of devices to create a platform, which monitors people’s sleep, physiology , movement and indoor-outdoor activities and we feed this to a series of machine line algorithms looking at people’s pattern of activities. Very simple things, like have people changed how they use kitchen appliances? Which, in terms of some diseases,  can indicate they are not eating or drinking well.”

It is going to be a huge market. 

Barnaghi reckons that this AI system, which  began testing in 2019, will be ready for commercial use in three to five years’  and believes it could attract private money and entrepreneurs.

“It is going to be a huge market,” he says.

“The biggest thing for entrepreneurs is going to be regulatory issues, because you need to get regulatory approvals. Once you get regulatory approval you need to be able to find, especially in the UK, interface with your biggest customer base, which  is the National Health Service.”

How regulatory approval could be possible. 

Yet it is not impossible for entrepreneurs to get this regulatory approval, he says.

“I think it is not that difficult, I think a few years ago people thought it was. But there are procedures in place, nothing is perfect, but I am sure if you have the right research environment, I am sure a company with a lot of resources can do that. I think the UK and European market is more regulated and I think that they are more connected to public health systems and I think you need to find a way to interface with public systems to make your solutions successful.”

Health business entrepreneurs take note and put a date in your diary.  Maybe now is the right time to start the long journey towards regulatory approval – it could prove lucrative.