Stanford to fight complex diseases with AI from Flanders

"Stanford University will be using the Robovision platform to provide AI systems with data with annotations attached,” comments Jonathan Berte, chairman of Robovision. The Flanders-based company’s AI platform should increase productivity and help Stanford build larger-scale AI systems that are easier to use for medical specialists without the intervention of programmers or data scientists.

Robovision is working with Professor Olivier Gevaert, whose lab at Stanford University focuses on oncology and cardiovascular diseases. A team of 10 researchers seeks to improve the detection of complex diseases. “The main goal is to have larger data sets so that the medical models are much more effective,” explains Berte.

“Stanford chose Robovision for the quality of our platform as well as our medical knowledge,” Berte continues. Indeed, the Ghent-based company is working on several projects in the healthcare sector. For instance, Robovision is developing an AI tool to detect and monitor very small cancer lesions. 

“Detecting cancer early on is critical to boosting a patient’s chances of survival,” adds Stephane Willaert, who heads the healthcare department at Robovision. “To develop tools that can help with that early detection, we need to work together with leading oncology centers. Stanford University fits into that picture as well.”

But Robovision’s work ends up in various other application fields, too. For instance, its software proved capable of recognizing plants, even if they sometimes have very unpredictable shapes. The company is also experimenting with smart 3D recognition, while the platform allows non-programmers to build AI applications for numerous purposes. Those applications are capable collaborate with each other. “In quite a few companies, automation teams and projects work in too an isolated way,” says Berte. “Our platform provides a solution for that.”

Robovision also has extensive experience with software-as-a-service and achieved various breakthroughs with industrial applications. There is, for instance, a partnership with Hitachi, a Japanese firm using Robovision’s technology for the quality control of nanochips. Meanwhile, closer to its home base in Ghent, Robovision is also helping Flanders-based company Sioen with the quality control of industrial textiles.

With a team of 103 full-time employees and 22 outsourced engineers, Robovision already operates in 38 countries. Over  1,000 robots operate on the platform worldwide. But the company keeps raising the bar when it comes to its ambitions for the future. 

Under the leadership of its new CEO Thomas Van den Driessche, Robovision aims to raise between EUR 20 million and 50 million in capital through a series A capital round by the end of 2023. The company also aims for a stock market listing, by 2025 at the earliest.

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