Precision Healthcare Revolution: Unleashing AI's potential — Interview with Carlos Ciller, CEO and Co-founder of RetinAI

09.08.2023 16:17, Rita Longobardi

RetinAI is making waves in the healthcare industry with its mission to enable informed decisions sooner in healthcare. Through its innovative AI-powered image analysis platform, RetinAI facilitates drug discovery, clinical studies, and patient care. Venturelab invites you to join us and Carlos, as the future of healthcare is being reshaped and RetinAI continues to expand its AI prowess into diverse medical domains.

Hello, Carlos! Thank you for joining us today. Can you provide an overview of your startup and its mission in the healthcare industry?
Our mission is to enable the right decisions sooner in healthcare. This is extremely relevant when you are developing new drugs, defining populations, target patients, inclusion/exclusion criteria… or even when you are taking decisions on a patient based on the clinical and imaging data you have available as a physician. We enable those decisions, by leveraging data and AI-empowered image analysis to enhance patient outcomes through optimized R&D pipelines, accelerated clinical studies, and digital precision medicine. This is done through a harmonized, standardized and CE/FDA-certified data management platform, Discovery, which operates via web browsers on local servers or on the cloud, allowing precision analysis with proprietary AI models. The platform further facilitates secure remote collaboration between all stakeholders and is provided to pharma companies, research institutes, device manufacturers and clinics alike.

Could you explain your AI platform's key features and capabilities and how it sets you apart from other healthcare startups?
RetinAI provides a comprehensive solution for managing data at scale and integrating AI technology for analysis in a regulated and efficient environment. Our platform offers value through data management - including standardization and harmonization, with user access across an ecosystem; validated AI for automating insights and understanding diseases, and outcomes; automation and optimization workflows to enhance industry processes. Unlike competitors that focus on only one aspect, we offer a holistic approach. Additionally, we excel in regulatory compliance, holding both CE and FDA medical device certifications.

What specific challenges or pain points in healthcare does your platform address?
For pharmaceutical & Life sciences companies, our platform accelerates drug discovery and clinical development, thanks to our advanced data harmonization and analytics capabilities. The insights we generate inform targeted drug design and critical commercial decisions such as geographies, population or drug effectiveness, and our process automation streamlines clinical trials, bringing innovative treatments to market quicker and more efficiently. Further, Clinics and clinicians reap the benefits of reduced administrative work through task automation offered by Discovery, allowing them to focus on what's most important: patient care. Our data-driven insights and automation assist in making accurate and consistent diagnoses, crafting personalized treatment plans, and improving patient outcomes.


RetinAI Founders, from left to right: Carlos Ciller, Stefanos Apostolopoulos, and Sandro De Zanet

Can you elaborate on your collaboration with Novartis and how it enhances the value of your platform?
The collaboration between RetinAI and Novartis, which began in 2020, harnesses Novartis' long history of clinical study data and expertise to test our AI-driven solutions in ophthalmology. This partnership allowed us to develop and validate our platform on a global scale, focusing on various agreements under a non-exclusive master collaboration. One project involved using RetinAI's certified Discovery in a study with over 500 neovascular age-related macular degeneration patients. This pioneering study assessed how AI-enhanced optical coherence tomography (OCT) images impact disease activity assessment, showcasing the efficiency of our products in diagnosis and treatment decisions. 

What measures do you take to ensure the security and privacy of patient data when using your platform?
Our software complies with all relevant regulations and standards for data security and privacy, including the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA), PIPEDA for the Canadian market and ISO 27001 Information Security Management. Additionally, we undergo periodic security and regulatory audits by both regulatory authorities and customers, conduct penetration testing exercises with the help of external companies, and continuously monitor risks to ensure comprehensive software security and compliance.

What kind of healthcare organizations or providers currently utilize your platform, and what results or success stories have you seen so far?
We offer certified solutions to pharmaceutical companies (e.g., Novartis, Boehringer Ingelheim, Janssen), research institutions (e.g., University of Bern, Jules Gonin Eye Hospital), device manufacturers (e.g., Heidelberg Engineering), and clinics (e.g., Retina Consultants of America, Swissvisio). In one case, we reduced decision time for Novartis from 6 months to 6 weeks, completing our work 50x faster, increasing insight by 10x, and cutting costs by 1/20. In another instance, we achieved expert-level performance using AI-based data analysis compared to the time-consuming gold standard, delivering results comparable to an expert physician analyzing data 1000 times faster.



How do you envision the future of healthcare with the integration of your AI and data management platform?
We see a transformative future where some of the following opportunities arise:

• Optimized Decision-Making in Pharma: AI-driven insights optimize drug development, leading to safer and more effective medications.
• Drastically Reduced Development Time: Streamlined process cuts drug development from 12 to 8-9 years, providing faster patient access.
• Cost-effective Drug Development: Same funding can fuel multiple drug research, democratizing drug development.
• Reviving Interest in Less Targeted Populations: AI allows targeting once-overlooked demographics, expanding drug development focus.
• Empowering Physicians: AI handles routine tasks, enabling doctors to focus on personalized patient care.
• Healthcare Evolution Catalyst: Our goal is to drive healthcare evolution, expanding from eye diseases to neurodegenerative disorders and heart attack risk detection.

Can you explain the implementation process for integrating your platform into existing healthcare systems?
We connect with clients mainly through B2B sales. Initially, we'd set up joint project teams for successful adoption. Now, our skilled customer success team and digital resources handle transitions. Education is key for ROI, particularly in healthcare. Partnering for distribution and training, like with Heidelberg Engineering, boosts integration and synergy.

How do you work with healthcare organizations to ensure the affordability and accessibility of your platform?
Our products are primarily licensed as SaaS. Customers pay a yearly/quarterly/monthly fee depending on the licensing type and selected features, which enables the affordability and accessibility of our platform. Additional revenue streams may include bespoke fees for services such as product customizations, developing new solutions, or performing analysis on the customer’s behalf.

Could you share any future innovations that RetinAI is working on?
We focused on building a strong platform through paid partnerships with top Pharma companies like Novartis, Boehringer Ingelheim, J&J's Janssen, etc. to optimize R&D pipelines, support clinical trials in ophthalmology, and generate early million $ revenues. This success led to a solid, regulatory-compliant product. Now, we're expanding to directly aid physicians' clinical decisions, targeting the US with a recent partnership with Retina Consultants of America. This collaboration will analyze unprecedented real-world health data, leveraging our digital health tech and RCA's vast clinic network. We will grow in ophthalmology and expand into other relevant therapeutic areas, such as neurodegenerative disorders (Alzheimer, Parkinson, Multiple Sclerosis...) and vascular conditions (diabetes, Hypertension, etc). We will start seeing the results of those partnerships in 2024.

How did you collaborate with Venturelab?
We won Venture Kick in 2017 and participated in the Venture Leaders roadshows to Boston and China in the following years. We were also ranked in the TOP 100 Swiss Startup Award. Every single one of these programs brought us one step closer to success. Venture Kick, Venture Leaders, and the TOP 100 rankings are all seals of quality. The programs helped jumpstart our deep-tech startup and supported us during a critical phase from our academic roots to becoming entrepreneurs.


RetinAI's Team