As the race for COVID vaccines continues, still many tech companies are focusing efforts on other aspects of the virus-based reality, at least until we get the cure. From treatments for the virus to more efficient testing, the Israeli ecosystem is hard at work conjuring up the next COVID-related solution.
Neura, the leader in AI-powered behavioral intelligence providing real-world insights for health organizations, governments, and consumer brands announced the adoption of ViruScore™ COVID-19 predictive testing solution. "Neura's solution is a significant leap forward for the deployment of behavioral-intelligence tech in the fight against COVID-19," said Neura's CEO, Amit Hammer
Neura's Human Behavioral Intelligence Platform is the first AI-based approach to be utilized in the field, with HY Laboratories, the main provider of COVID-19 tests solutions in Israel, and one of the world's top 5 HMOs using it to grade testing samples to enable more efficient test pooling. In Neura's study with HY Laboratories, the Neura ViruScore™ solution achieved 98% accuracy in test prediction across a sample size of 1,000 tests. As a result, Neura was able to create a population sample with 2% positive infection rate, producing an optimal environment for pool testing and enabling the HMO to increase capacity by 6X.
. "Being able to identify high and low-risk groups, future outbreaks, and behavioral Super-Spreaders is crucial to government efforts to fight the virus. With the recent FDA approval of COVID-19 test pooling, Neura's insights will go even further in helping to slow and break down the chain of infection,," continued to explain Hammer.
Neura’s platform leverages AI and machine learning technologies to translate enormous amounts of anonymized data, collected from various sources, into actionable insights such as Social Distancing Index, Human Encounter Rate, crowd-gathering patterns and Sup-spreader mobility patterns. The insights are then used by governments and municipalities to further contain the spread of the virus while using data-backed decisions to allow citizens to return to daily activities.
As part of Neura's newest offering, these same COVID-19 insights are fused with pandemic data to create a risk score. The score is employed by HMOs and labs to grade the probability of a positive or negative result on a four-level scale ranging from "highest probability" to "lowest probability. Helping contain the current chaotic state of COVID-19 testing and potentially saving millions of dollars by reducing the number of tests required.
"As of today, we do not look only at the analytical and clinical utility of testing, but at the entire workflow and its implications on a much broader scale. Neura brings an out of the box approach and new possibilities for sample managing, achieving a powerful enhancement of the test pooling process," said Tsofnat Cohen Lubetzky, Head of Business Development at Hylabs. "By leveraging Neura's ViruScore solution, we are able to pool tests far more effectively, delivering much faster results, while helping to conserve supplies of vital testing kits, it has been an absolute and unequivocal breakthrough."
Neura was founded in 2013 by CEO Amit Hamer, VP Product Ori Shaashua, CTO Triinu Magi, VP of R&D Gil Mahler, and President Gilad Meiri. The company’s headquarters are based in Palo Alto, California.
