8 promising AI health tech startups looking to expand into North America

Companies in the latest cohort of the Innovate UK program are working to speed up cancer diagnosis, reduce infection risk and improve patient care.

Despite commitments from United Nations members, progress toward achieving universal health coverage by 2030 has been slow. Far too many people — an estimated 4.5 billion people around the world — do not have access to the health services they need. In Canada, 5.4 million adults lack a regular healthcare provider and wait times for various diagnostic tests are growing longer. This is an area where artificial intelligence can help, whether it’s through innovations in disease detection, providing key resources for patients or lifting the administrative burden of healthcare practitioners.

To help speed up the adoption of these solutions, MaRS has partnered with Innovate UK, an economic development agency to support eight U.K.-based AI health companies as they expand into North America. “Leveraging cutting-edge AI technology, the companies in this latest cohort are applying innovative solutions to clinical decision-making, diagnostics, mental health and women’s health,” says Hadeer Abdelhamid, a program manager with the international cohort programs at MaRS. “This six-month program will not only help them gain traction in a new market but also scale their impact in improving care.”

Here are eight startups pushing the boundaries of what’s possible.

Aisthesis Medical helps hospitals reduce ICU admissions

After battling sepsis twice in his life, Ioannis Gkouzionis, the co-founder and CEO of Aisthesis Medical, asked himself a question: What if we could give hospital teams an early warning system? The company’s AI tool, VIOSync, analyzes routine hospital data — vital signs, medical history, laboratory results — as well as the patient’s electronic health data to estimate the risk of sepsis up to 48 hours in advance. The tool provides a risk score for each patient with contributing factors and will trigger alerts for healthcare workers.

How it can help: Sepsis is a leading cause of hospital mortality worldwide. Treatment for the condition is most effective when started early. “We’re solving for earlier, reliable detection so teams can act before organ failure begins,” says Ioannis Gkouzionis, co-founder and CEO at Aisthesis.

Latest milestones: Aisthesis has raised £900,000 in venture capital pre-seed funding and more than £300,000 in grants. It also partnered with European hospitals and the U.K.’s National Health Service (NHS) partners, and is working toward Federal Drug Administration approval in the U.S.

Akrivia Health gives doctors a powerful tool to improve care for mental health disorders

Using its advanced natural language processing abilities, Akrivia Health’s AI tool reads clinical notes to pick up on subtle patterns that even experienced clinicians might not easily spot. The tool can group patients with similar characteristics, track their health changes over time and build a clearer picture of how treatments work.

How it can help: Co-founders David Newton and Mike Denis launched Akrivia Health in 2019 to radically improve mental health and dementia research and treatment. The company is building the world’s largest neuropsychiatric and neurodegenerative dataset, based on anonymized data from more than 6.3 million patient records. The platform can help healthcare providers, researchers and pharmaceutical companies evaluate treatments, optimize clinical trials and provide better care to people with dementia and mental health disorders.

Latest milestones: In May 2025, in partnership with Trial Deck, the company launched a transatlantic study of 50,000 participants from across the U.K. and the United States to better understand the causes and progression of dementia.

Anya offers 24/7 support for women’s health needs

Prior to founding her company, Chen Mao Davies had a dream career. A computer graphics and animation specialist, Davies was part of the Oscar-winning visual effects team that worked on Blade Runner 2049. After giving birth and experiencing such challenges as mastitis and postpartum depression, she decided to use her skills to create an app that could help other women.

How it can help: Research shows that breast milk is the ideal food for a baby’s growth and development, but nearly 40 percent of Canadian mothers say they gave up breastfeeding within weeks because of difficulties. Anya, named after Davies’s daughter, first launched with 3D avatars that answer breastfeeding questions. Chen has since expanded Anya’s health resources to support women throughout their reproductive lives. Users can access virtual consultation and private specialist care as well as personal health tracking and tutorials.

Latest milestones: In 2024, the Gloucestershire-based company won the National AI Awards for Healthcare in the U.K.

Blüm Health lifts administrative burden for healthcare providers

Based in Liverpool and London, Blüm Health uses AI to process clinical documents and streamline the administrative process for healthcare providers. Its platform handles referrals, interprets risk and helps clear wait lists.
How it can help: Blüm works closely with the NHS, as well as other companies and healthcare providers to develop systems that help physicians process patients quicker while remaining compliant to healthcare regulations.

Latest milestones: Named one of Sifted’s Top 100 fastest growing businesses in the U.K. and Ireland, Blüm now has 15 products in the market, with a mixture of Blüm-owned products, solutions co-created with the NHS as well as investments in companies the founders believe have the best ideas in the market.

C-Prio uses AI to speed up the diagnosis of colorectal cancer

Based in Essex, England, C-Prio is developing an AI tool that can help doctors diagnose colorectal cancer. “Our vision is to create a world where cancer is no longer a life-threatening condition,” says CEO and co-founder Dr. Shoabin Wu. Drawing on the experience of C-Prio’s chief advisor Paul Finch, who is a stage four cancer survivor, Wu and her team launched the company in 2022 to speed up diagnosis. Its tool uses AI to make it easier for histopathologists (doctors who examine tissues and cells and diagnose diseases) to give timely and accurate diagnoses.

How it can help: Colorectal cancer is the fourth-most commonly diagnosed cancer in Canada, with global cases expected to rise to 3.2 million new cases per year by 2040. “A major challenge is the global shortage of histopathologists, leaving patients waiting too long for results,” says Wu. C-Prio’s tool classifies biopsy cases, automatically reports normal cases and prioritizes those most likely to be cancerous, reducing the workload and speeding up the diagnostic process.

Latest milestones: C-Prio has completed a successful preclinical study with the U.K.’s NHS, secured government and charity funding and has been recognized internationally as finalists of the TBAT Innovation Challenge at the Convention on Pharmaceutical Ingredients (CPHI) in Milan in 2024.

Healthy.io transforms smartphone cameras into medical devices

When Healthy.io founder, Yonatan Adiri noticed how much a smartphone camera could do, he wondered how it could be applied to healthcare. The company, which has offices in London, Tel Aviv and Boston, offers mobile applications to help patients test conditions at home. Its Minuteful Kidney analyzes kidney function through an albumin-to-creatine ratio (ACR) urine test using the smartphone camera and an at-home kit, and its Minuteful Wound app creates a 3D model of a wound to test depth, circumference and tissue type.

How it can help: An estimated 3.8 million Canadians live with diabetes, the leading cause of kidney disease. The technology gives patients the ability to conduct simple, routine tests at home. Healthy.io’s app enables patients to perform ACR tests in three minutes. And the wound app lets patients scan their wound and send it to a clinician remotely.

Latest milestones: To date, Healthy.io apps have provided kidney tests to more than 300,000 patients, and is on course to save the U.K.’s publicly funded healthcare system £600 million over five years.

Motics gives healthcare providers a digital support team at their fingertips

Working as a doctor in London, Motics co-founder and CEO, Dr. Harvinder Power spent more hours on a computer than with patients. “And I kept hearing the same story from my colleagues: ‘I leave work to go home and catch up on work’ with a backlog of emails and letters to write every day,” he says. Motics was launched in 2023 to give healthcare workers an operating system that takes care of operational work.

How it can help: The company’s AI agents act as scribes that can take accurate doctors notes, answer and place phone calls, handle emails and bills on behalf of practitioners. With the tool, Dr. Power says physicians can focus on caring for their patients while Motics automates administrative work.

Latest milestones: Hundreds of clinics are now using Motics, processing more than 10 million patient interactions a year, saving clinicians approximately two hours a day on patient care.

Pictura Bio detects infections in seconds

Pictura Bio grew out of research at the University of Oxford, where associate professor Nicole Robb and Nicolas Shiaelis, a PhD student at the time, began developing an AI imaging system that could identify and analyze viruses and bacteria using fluorescent labelling and high-resolution microscopes. The company’s rapid diagnostic tool can detect pathogens in less than a minute.

How it can help: Globally, respiratory tract infections are among the most common reasons for clinic visits. Yet, diagnosing such ailments remains slow, says Nicholas Trotter, product manager at Pictura Bio, since lab-based tests can take hours to days to return results. “This forces clinicians across all settings to make blind decisions under pressure, often resorting to broad-spectrum antibiotics or unnecessary admissions ‘just in case,’” he says. Pictura Bio delivers diagnostics directly at the point-of-care — be it a hospital or clinic — so that patients can receive accurate test results in less than a minute.

Latest milestones: The company raised £2.6 million in 2022 and rolled out its first fully integrated device in a clinical setting in 2025.

Learn more about how MaRS and Innovate U.K. are bringing new breakthroughs to Canada.

Illustration by Stephen Gregory, Images: Unsplash