Sanofi, MIS team up on AI-powered diagnostic tool for rare diseases

Sanofi announced on Thursday a partnership with French start-up Medical Intelligence Service (MIS) to develop AccelRare, an artificial intelligence (AI) solution designed to accelerate the diagnosis of rare diseases. Etienne Van der Elst, digital innovation programme leader at Sanofi, said the tie-up "illustrates our ability to put new technologies at the service of healthcare professionals and patients." Financial terms were not disclosed.

AccelRare is meant to help speed up the pre-diagnosis of 270 rare diseases with treatment or appropriate care. It is based on MedVir, a pre-diagnosis tool that MIS is the editor of. According to Sanofi, AccelRare works by having doctors enter a patient's symptoms and clinical signs, and the algorithm identifies if there is a significant risk of one or more rare diseases. A list of potential conditions is provided, along with information about the diseases, as well as contact details of the nearest certified expert centre. Physicians may then decide to send their patients to one of these centres to confirm the pre-diagnosis and organise the patient's care.

The companies will initially test the tool based on real clinical cases and 270 managed diseases. The aim is to "adjust the degree of weighting and selectivity of the different symptoms entered to ensure that the tool provides the correct pre-diagnosis," Sanofi explained. AccelRare will then be available free of charge on the internet for all healthcare professionals, in French and English, and then adapted in other languages. AccelRare is expected to launch at the end of this year.

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