Ali Parsa is back in digital health with start-up Quadrivia
Ali Parsa in his former role at Babylon Health
It's been over a year since Babylon Health – once the darling of the UK digital health sector – foundered into bankruptcy and, in the meantime, former CEO Ali Parsa has not been idle.
In a return to social media after a protracted absence, Parsa has ended speculation about his next move by revealing new healthtech venture Quadrivia, which was set up to develop Qu, described as a digital personal assistant "for clinicians, by clinicians."
His LinkedIn post announcing the new company notes that Qu is an artificial intelligence-powered tool that can support clinicians "not just for a single task, but across the full stack of routine clinical and administrative tasks, patient interactions, decision-making, chronic and postoperative care, continuous monitoring and support, and in multiple languages."
Among the use cases listed on Quadrivia's website are checking in type 2 diabetes patients, coordinating the care of assisted living residents, and evaluating the care of people receiving hormone replacement therapy (HRT).
Parsa claims the software aims to address a foundational challenge in healthcare – "the structural imbalance between the elastic demand from our communities and the constrained supply of our clinicians."
He adds: "Recent developments in AI, while still in their infancy, offer hope that we can finally address this imbalance by creating an elastic source of clinical supply support."
A whitepaper on Qu notes that scarcity of skilled healthcare workers has been identified as a major problem by the World Health Organization (WHO), which predicts a shortfall of 10-18 million workers by 2030.
Qu – which, according to Parsa, is the fruit of a collaboration between a global team of experienced AI scientists, technologists, and prominent clinical leaders – has now been launched for beta testing and Quadrivia is seeking collaborators to put the platform through its paces.
"Qu is still in its infancy and, while developing fast, needs further improvements before deployment," according to Quadrivia.
"Once the underlying foundation of Qu meets the required operational and safety standards, Quadrivia will release a clinician-only personal assistant version and open Qu for clinicians to autonomously self-train it according to their needs and preferences. "
The company has also announced an undisclosed pre-seed investment from Norrsken VC.
Digital-first health service provider Babylon Health went public in 2021 with a market cap of more than $3.5 billion, but saw the value of its shares collapse as losses mounted and struggled to maintain its NYSE listing. It was delisted from the exchange last year and was eventually broken up and sold off as its cash reserves dried up.
