9 healthcare outfits named among Forbes’s ‘top AI companies to watch’ in 2021

Forbes has released its third annual AI 50, a list of private, promising North American companies that are using artificial intelligence in ways that are fundamental to their operations, and McKesson Ventures portfolio company Komodo Health is among them.

To be considered, companies must be privately held and using machine learning (where systems learn from data to improve on tasks), natural language processing (which enables programs to “understand” written or spoken language), or computer vision (which relates to how machines “see”). AI companies incubated at, largely funded through, or acquired by large tech, manufacturing, or industrial firms are not eligible for consideration.

Forbes received several hundred entries, and about 400 of those qualified for consideration. The magazine then used an algorithm to help judges select the 50 companies that best leverage AI for purposes fundamental to their operations.

This year, eight healthcare AI companies in addition to Komodo Health made the cut: Atomwise, Ezra, Genesis Therapeutics, Intelligencia, Nines, Verge Genomics, Viz.ai, and Whisper. These companies operate in fields of drug discovery, telediagnostics, cancer detection, and hearing assistance.

In describing Komodo Health, Forbes wrote, “The backbone of Komodo Health is a ‘map’ which compiles the clinical encounters of 325 million patients who go through the healthcare system. The end result is a massive web of data that allows Komodo’s more than 100 customers—which span government agencies, healthcare payers, and pharmaceutical firms—to uncover a slew of clinical and business insights.”

Komodo’s analytics-driven AI allows for numerous use cases that include forecasting the market for a drug, identifying patients for clinical trials, and tracking the effectiveness of treatments once they are on the market. Currently the company has received a total of $314 million in funding and is valued at $3.3. billion.

Read the original article here.

See the Forbes AI 50 here.