Qure.ai, a Mumbai company that applies artificial intelligence to medical imaging, has raised US$40 million in a round led by Novo Holdings and HealthQuad, with the existing investor MassMutual Ventures. The company says the money will extend its reach, particularly in the United States and Europe, and fund product development for critical care and community diagnostics.

Qure.ai says its algorithms read and interpret X-rays, CT scans and ultrasounds in under a minute, that its products are cleared by the United States regulator and carry the European CE mark, and that its technology reaches more than four million people across 50 countries each year. It was founded in 2016 and incubated at Fractal Analytics, and its chief executive, Prashant Warier, says the aim is to help clinicians diagnose illnesses faster and in more detail.

Where the reading is paid for

The case for artificial intelligence in radiology is usually made where radiologists are scarce, which is much of the region. The commercial case is made where somebody pays per scan. Those two geographies are not the same, and a company that raises money to enter the United States and Europe is following the second rather than the first.

This is less a contradiction than a description of how medical software is funded: revenue from well-resourced systems can subsidise the work in under-resourced ones, if it is reinvested there. Novo Holdings, which led the round, said the investment fitted its interest in accessible healthcare and that it was the first by its Asia team in India; HealthQuad pointed to the company's international certifications, which is the part that can be checked.

The four million people a year is the company's own figure, and it measures scans run rather than outcomes improved. Whether an AI reading of a chest X-ray changes what happens to a patient depends on the next step in the clinical pathway, which is the part this round does not fund.