Medical devices such as heart valves and vascular implants can save lives, but proving that they will work safely for people with different anatomies remains a significant challenge. UK based healthcare technology company adsilico is addressing this problem with artificial intelligence that creates virtual patient models, allowing manufacturers to evaluate medical devices across diverse populations before clinical trials. The University of Leeds spinout has now raised £10 million in Series A funding to advance its technology and expand into additional medical applications.
Funding to Accelerate Medical Innovation
The £10 million funding round was led by PXN Ventures, with participation from existing investors Northern Gritstone and Parkwalk. The investment will support the development of adsilico’s simulation technology, expansion into new therapeutic areas and recruitment as the company grows its operations.
Founded in 2024 by Sheena Macpherson, Dr Nishant Ravikumar and Dr Zeike Taylor, adsilico aims to help medical device manufacturers make better informed decisions during product development. Its technology is designed to provide additional evidence about how devices may perform in different patients before manufacturers progress to clinical testing.
Why Medical Device Testing Needs More Diversity
Traditional medical device clinical trials often involve only a few hundred participants. Although these studies are essential for evaluating safety and performance, they may not fully capture the anatomical and demographic diversity of the wider patient population.
Differences in age, sex, ethnicity, body size and underlying medical conditions can influence how an implanted device performs. Recruiting sufficiently diverse participants can also increase the time and cost required to conduct clinical studies.
These limitations can make it difficult to determine whether a device will work equally well across different groups. They may also leave manufacturers with unanswered questions about device sizing, patient suitability and potential complications.
adsilico aims to address these challenges by allowing manufacturers to investigate a broader range of patient characteristics through computer simulations.
Inside the Virtual Chimera Platform
The company’s core technology, Virtual Chimera, combines generative artificial intelligence with physics based simulations to create virtual representations of human hearts and blood vessels.
The platform uses anonymised clinical scans to generate anatomical models that reflect variations across patient populations. Manufacturers can then simulate how medical devices interact with these virtual anatomies and assess performance under different conditions.
This approach can help developers evaluate suitable device sizes, identify patient groups that may face greater risks and refine clinical trial strategies. By identifying potential problems earlier in development, the technology aims to reduce expensive design changes and support more targeted testing.
The simulations are intended to complement existing testing and clinical evidence rather than replace the regulatory requirements needed to establish medical device safety and effectiveness.
Supporting Safer and More Inclusive Healthcare
CEO and co founder Sheena Macpherson has highlighted the consequences of limited representation in medical device development. Patients may face uncertainty about whether a device will work for them when people with similar anatomical characteristics were not adequately represented during its design and testing.
By giving manufacturers earlier insight into anatomical diversity, adsilico hopes to improve product development and help reduce the risk of preventable complications.
The approach could also contribute to reducing reliance on animal testing in some stages of research, depending on the device, application and evidence required.
The company has already completed projects with heart valve and neurovascular device manufacturers. Its cardiac research is also scheduled to be presented at TCT, a meeting focused on innovations in structural heart therapies.
Expanding Into New Medical Applications
The new funding will help adsilico develop its virtual heart models further and expand its technology into neurovascular devices, including flow diverters used to treat brain aneurysms. The company also plans to increase its workforce and extend its platform into additional therapeutic areas.
As medical device development becomes increasingly data driven, virtual patient modelling could provide manufacturers with another way to investigate safety, performance and patient variability.
For adsilico, the next challenge is demonstrating how its simulations can deliver reliable, useful evidence across more devices and clinical applications. If successful, its technology could help manufacturers design medical devices that better account for the differences between the patients who depend on them.
