Student doctor wins £20k for AI medical app
Talha Mehmood’s Medily AI app wins first prize in business competition at The Shard
A medical student at Anglia Ruskin University (ARU) has won £20k in funding to further develop his medical app that uses artificial intelligence to assist doctors.
Medily AI has been designed by 4th-year student Talha Mehmood to improve patient care and streamline clinical decision-making by acting as an assistant and second pair of eyes for medical professionals.
The app could allow doctors to spend less time on admin tasks and more time with patients. It can listen into consultations and write up notes automatically, craft accurate medical letters and can suggest exercise and meal plans. As well as an assistant for medical professionals, it is also designed for trainee doctors to help them prepare for various types of exams, providing quiz questions and accurate simulations involving AI-generated patients.
Talha, who grew up in Harlow in Essex, is now looking to roll out the product to a wider audience, and wowed judges at the inaugural Ignite competition at The Shard in London.
The competition, which has been launched by social enterprise philanthropists The Ford Family Foundation in partnership with Durham University, saw six students or recent graduates from UK universities pitch to a panel comprising of Jack Ford of the Ford Family Foundation, Sarah Grieves of innovative tech platform Beam, CEO of Jigsaw Education Group Sanjeev Baga, and Ground+Air’s Jim Brown.
The panel was sufficiently impressed to award Talha first prize, and £20k worth of funding, with the other five finalists sharing the remaining funding from the total £50k prize pot.
Talha, who was originally interested in computer science before beginning his medical training, said:
“The original idea came about when one of my lecturers, Dr Stephen Hughes, wrote an article for The Conversation about ChatGPT and the medical profession. There seemed to be a gap for an AI application that was genuinely useful for clinicians and medical professionals.
“It has taken about 18 months to refine the model and train it to be as accurate as possible. Friends and colleagues soon saw its value and began using it daily.
“Witnessing its impact, I felt inspired to expand its reach. This is how Medily was born—to empower everyone with efficient, accessible knowledge, turning a simple late-night idea into a tool with the potential to make a global impact on people’s lives.”
Dr Stephen Hughes, Senior Lecturer in Medicine at Anglia Ruskin University (ARU), said:
“It has been fantastic to see the progress that Talha has made with his work in developing Medily AI. The range of potential applications that it can be put to in clinical practice and medical education is quite remarkable and shows how the power of artificial intelligence can be harnessed for the public good.”
Tony Ford, founder of the Ford Family Foundation, added:
“Ignite is a testament to the incredibly driven young people coming out of our universities, to their intelligence, their entrepreneurship and most importantly to their social values.
“The final was a masterclass in pitching and we are looking to help these social enterprises by investing our money, time and experience to maximise their potential and chances of success. Our Family Foundation is keen to invest an initial £3.5m in sustainable, growing and impactful businesses.”
For more information about Medily AI, contact Talha at [email protected] or [email protected]