Congenica wins Horizon Prize for genomics platform
Digital health company Congenica has been announced as a joint winner of the Horizon Prize.
Run by MIT Solve – an initiative of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) - the Horizon Prize looks for technology-based solutions that use data to help rare disease patients get the right care faster and more accurately.
Congenica’s winning proposal was based on the deployment of its artificial intelligence (AI) powered genomic analysis software platform, which is designed to improve diagnosis. Congenica’s pioneering, highly scalable, and fully evidenced AI framework is able to detect differences, not only in disease patterns between different groups, but also in their responses to therapy.
Congenica’s proposal focuses on the deployment of the platform to candidate institutes recommended by Congenica’s Patient Advocacy and Engagement Advisory Board and the International Rare Disease Research Consortium (IRDiRC) for the free processing of samples from 10,000 rare disease patients from ethnic minority groups.
It’s hoped that a diverse set of patients will benefit from access to genetic testing that may resolve their diagnostic journey. In addition, the project will allow a more complete data set on ethnic minority rare disease patients to be formed, enabling clinical models to be further refined and improving the rate of diagnosis as part of a virtuous feedback loop.
Sandro Morganella, head of Artificial Intelligence, Congenica: “Receiving this award highlights the importance of AI in clinical genomics. We are now able to extract complex patterns from large amounts of data and build prediction models that have a direct impact on patients’ lives. We are just at the beginning of this AI revolution and look forward to the generation of further evidence of the benefits of using Congenica’s AI initiative in healthcare in the years to come.”
Charles Steward, Patient Advocacy and Engagement Lead, Congenica, said: “At Congenica, the patient is central to everything we do. By deploying our platform to underrepresented communities we can remove the barriers to the diagnostic testing of rare diseases, shortening the diagnostic odyssey for individual patients and improving our clinical models more broadly.”
Dr David Atkins, chief executive officer, Congenica added: “It is an honour to win such a prestigious award, which is testament to the continued dedication of our team in developing our world-leading platform to improve the diagnosis of rare diseases.”