VUNO: Developing Intelligent Solutions for Medical Emergencies

Artificial Intelligence based diagnostic technology is revolutionising the healthcare market. Korean AI startup VUNO-Med has been developing products and systems, which are proving to be superior and vital especially for emergency cases and pre-warning for cardiac arrests. VUNO, which was founded in 2014, offers AI-based medical solutions for doctors and patients. It provides a platform and consulting services for medical data analysis.

Helping hospitals deal better with emergencies

VUNO’s Deep Triage and Acuity Scale or DTAS, an AI based emergency patient classification software developed in partnership with Mediplex Sejong Hospital, has proven to be very useful, as per results of clinical studies released in October 2018. Emergency rooms in hospitals operate patient classification using tools named Triage and Acuity Scale (TAS). It helps them set order to demands for emergency medical attention for visiting patients.

Vuno’s DTAS system uses AI to help set the emergency patient classification based on three models – deaths, ICU and general ward admission. The clinical study, which proved DTAS to be superior quality, was based on about 80 percent of the data of 11,659,559 patients collected by the national emergency medical information network for over three years.

VUNO’s deep-learning based warning system can predict cardiac arrest chance in hospitalised patient within 24 hours.

VUNO’s Deep Learning-based Early Warning System (DEWS) also developed in collaboration with Sejong Hospital helps healthcare staff by predicting the chances of a hospitalised patient having a cardiac arrest within 24 hours. Hospitals mostly use Modified Early Warning Score (MEWS) based on vital signs to evaluate the status of hospitalised patients.

VUNO’s deep learning-based model automatically predicts the risk of cardiac arrest by using data of four vital signs, including blood pressure, heart rate, breathing rate, and body temperature. Clinical trial results for DEWS have confirmed it has statistically higher accuracy and lower false alarm rate than other algorithms such as MEWS.

Taking care of precise medical analysis

VUNO specialises in providing intelligent solutions for vision tasks including image classification, object detection, content-based image retrieval, and visual inspection, among others. VUNO’s AI-based device – BoneAge, which determines a patient’s bone age by recognising patterns on an X-ray image has got its stamp of approval from the Ministry of Food and Drug Safety in South Korea. The device’s information combined with hormone levels can be used by the doctor to diagnose precocious puberty and slow growth.

‘We have the experience and a philosophy on how technology can provide the needs of hospitals and doctor.’ – VUNO team

VUNO is supported by an advisory board consisting of radiologists and medical scientists. The startup has reached more than 10 major hospitals in Korea to develop ideas on numerous possibilities made through the process of co-development, clinical trials, and verification.

The startup has issued 14 patent applications on the topic of innovative technology and presented more than 10 international clinical trials with Service Corporation International (SCI). Currently, they are in the process of getting a variety of medical devices with AI-based diagnostic software licensed. VUNO’s mission is to bring AI-based health care systems to life as a real, legitimate medical equipment, helping medical fraternity and the patients.