Oxfordshire based business, RAIQC Ltd, provides a web-based platform that simulates day-to-day practice, allowing radiologists, clinicians, radiographers, nurses, students and educators to review and report on medical images in a secure online environment. Using over 3000 real-world clinical cases, they offer structured reporting study lists for training and assessment across a range of imaging modalities and disease areas.
We caught up with RAIQC’s Operations Manager, Cosmin Mihaiu, to learn all about RAIQC’s business journey so far. Cosmin tells us, “The RAIQC (Report And Image Quality Control) platform was originally developed as an educational tool at Oxford University Hospitals by Professor Fergus Gleeson and Dr Sarim Ather, now Directors of RAIQC. To accelerate its development a spin out company was officially launched in 2021. Once someone becomes a qualified radiologist, they get limited feedback on their reporting accuracy. Professor Gleeson wanted to develop a tool akin to a “flight simulator” for radiologists to assess their reporting skills in a simulated environment throughout their careers. The founding team were also really interested in seeing if they could help non-radiology healthcare professionals and students improve their interpretation skills through real world medical. As, although they get some form of image training in medical school, this experience mostly comes from when they are working in a hospital. RAIQC’s platform now offers structured reporting study lists for training and assessment across a range of imaging modalities and disease areas. It also provides hosting for clinical research and AI validation studies that require review of medical imaging.”
Cosmin tells us how OxLEP Business played a key part in growing RAIQC and helping get them to where they are today. “We found out about OxLEP and contacted them to see what support was available within the innovation space. We signed up to their Innovation Support for Business Programme (ISfB) and received several hours of excellent one-to-one support from specialists.”
Cosmin continues, “ISfB included an innovation programme run with TheHill at Oxford University Hospitals, part of which was the Market Access Accelerator programme. RAIQC took part in this and benefitted greatly from it because it was innovation advice specifically within the health tech sector. We also had some other ISfB support including a workshop which helped us with our pitching skills, plus several webinars around finding and winning innovation funding. All of this amazing support was available to us at no cost.”
“The process of the grant application was great, if we had any questions the OxLEP team were more than happy to jump on a call or email us. The same was true for the grant delivery. There wasn’t one instance where we didn’t get the advice we needed in order to progress.”
As part of the ISfB programme there were Go-Create grants available for Oxfordshire businesses who were looking to develop their products or services. RAIQC were successful in being awarded a grant. Cosmin shares his experience, “The team at OxLEP told us about a grant available and at the time we were looking to develop our platform further to minimise the need for us to do lots of the admin management. For example, a corporate client could have up to a hundred users and we needed to manually set them up and assign content on the RAIQC platform. This took a lot of time, so we wanted to give the client the ability to manage this themselves – ultimately improving user experience and saving us, and them, time and hassle. So, we decided to apply.
The process of the application was great, if we had any questions the OxLEP team were more than happy to jump on a call or email us. The same was true for the grant delivery. There wasn’t one instance where we didn’t get the advice we needed in order to progress. We were awarded the grant and used the money to improve our technology and create a more seamless experience for our users. As a small company with very little funding, without OxLEP’s grant, we would have been many months behind this development.”
Cosmin closes by telling us about RAIQC’s next steps. “Things are moving along nicely. We have many clients using the platform. We have multiple opportunities which we are chasing. From a tech point of view there are still further developments we want to do in order to make to the platform even better and more comprehensive for our clients. We’re also working with other organisations to create content for new subjects and also improve our AI algorithms. It’s looking good for the future and we’re going to keep working hard to improve and grow the business. We definitely plan to stay in touch with OxLEP and lean on their continued support.”
