This is conversation number 9 with a business in the 2021 cohort of the ‘AI for Social Impact Programme’ – a partnership between Social Tech Trust and Microsoft for Startups. who are supporting purpose driven ventures using technology to make a positive impact on people’s lives. 

This week, the focus is on Personalised Medicine – recognizing that all human beings are different, and that we respond in very different ways to complex diseases, which themselves are also extremely diverse in their nature. So a one-size-fits-all approach to treatment is very inefficient, and of course this also applies to the drug development process.

By accurately stratifying patients taking part in clinical trials,  the trials can be run far more quickly and cheaply, with more precise results..

My guest business this week is ILoF, which stands for Intelligent Lab on Fiber, who are accelerating a new era of personalized therapies by building an intelligent platform for precise, patient-centric drug development.

iLoF is using AI and photonics to build a cloud-based library of disease biomarkers and biological profiles, and provide screening and stratification tools in an affordable, fast, portable way. 

The company has already won numerous industry awards, and is considered one of the most disruptive companies in Europe using Photonics and AI to solve the biggest healthcare challenges of our time

My guest is Mehak Mumtaz, co-founder and COO of ILoF, who met her co-founders on an EIT accelerator program in 2019 while she was working in life sciences strategy with EY-Parthenon. Building on her background in Biochemistry, her PhD in Pathology & Oncology and previous experience with an Oxford university spin-out, she joined Portuguese entrepreneurs Luis and Joana to launch the business just a few months before the pandemic took hold.