A year after announcing its intention to sell most of the assets of IBM Watson Health, International Business Machines Corp. (IBM) finally reached an agreement with Francisco Partners. Terms of the deal, which is expected to close in the second half of 2022, were not disclosed. The gutting of Watson Health comes less than two months after IBM spun off its $19 billion managed technology services business, Kyndryl Holdings as a standalone company.

A homegrown company in Pakistan has developed a multi-grip bionic arm that aims to mimic the movement of real limbs while costing a fraction of what prosthetic arms normally cost. Anas Niaz and Ovais Qurshi founded Karachi-based Bioniks Pte. Ltd. in 2018 to developed efficient and low-cost robotic prosthetic limbs.

Canadian company Future Fertility Inc. is hatching plans to expand the user base for its flagship egg prediction software product, Violet, for egg cryopreservation. The noninvasive image analysis tool uses artificial intelligence (AI) to evaluate the reproductive potential of mature eggs. Investors are backing the Toronto-based company with $6 million in series A funds, so it can expand internationally and develop additional assessment products.

Cancer trials that stratify patients using biomarkers increase their likelihood of proceeding to the next phase more than 500% compared to trials run without biomarkers, Canadian researchers recently determined, and biotech companies have invested heavily in identifying new biomarkers for a wide range of applications. Genialis Inc. has tackled the problem of huge investment in biomarkers with little return by developing a platform that combines artificial intelligence and machine learning.

PARIS – Milvue SAS completed a series A round, raising more than $9 million towards deployment of its artificial intelligence-based software solution used for diagnosis and full triage of osteoarticular pathologies in emergency departments.

French remote monitoring and software startup Implicity SAS won FDA clearance for its ILR ECG Analyzer, a medical algorithm that analyzes electrocardiogram data from implantable loop recorders (ILRs). The company plans to launch the artificial intelligence (AI)-powered algorithm, which also is CE marked, in both the U.S. and Europe beginning next month.

Announcements of new radiology solutions enhanced by artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning appeared almost daily in 2021, all promising more accurate diagnoses in less time and increased productivity and confidence for radiologists. Hospitals and health care systems have increasingly recognized the advantages of these systems, with Sage Growth Partners reporting that 90% of hospitals have an AI strategy in place, up from 53% in 2019, but the deployment lags, with only 34% of hospitals having installed an AI solution.

LONDON – Brainomix Ltd. has raised £16 million (US$ 21.2 million) in a series B, enabling the company to extend its artificial intelligence (AI)-driven diagnostic platform beyond the initial deployment in stroke, to the assessment of disease progression in lung fibrosis, and response to therapy in lung cancer.

2021 may mark the beginning of a new phase in treatment of depression. While genetic matching of depression therapies to patients has been touted for a decade, meta-analyses have not supported claims of improved response rates with studies often finding that any improvements seen likely came from switching patients to guideline-recommended therapies rather than any insight from genetics.

Regulatory agencies across the globe had their hands full in 2020 and 2021 in responding to the COVID-19 pandemic, but that is just one reason that regulatory frameworks for artificial intelligence are lagging. Several regulatory proposals have been floated, but one of these hints at a need for regulatory harmonization, a requirement that seems certain to add yet more drag to a process that is already years behind the technology.