AI and facial diagnosis company FDNA sets up genomics coalition

Boston biotech FDNA has teamed up with several research organizations to create a consortium that will try to apply artificial intelligence and machine learning to the development of new medicines and it’s looking for other partners.

The Genomics Collaborative launched with the aim of using computational techniques to analyze genotype and phenotype data and try to tease out physiological relationships that could lead to new drug targets and help millions of undiagnosed patients globally.

FDNA  is making its AI and “deep learning” technologies which can analyze (anonymously) data gleaned from diverse sources such as images, clinical notes, and voice and video recordings—to organizations signing up to the program.

FDNA is arguably best known for its Face2Gene technology, an app-based tool which tries to use “de-identified” facial features as a diagnostic for rare diseases. Clinicians can take a smartphone photo of a patient and reference the image against a database, which presents a list of possible diseases along with the degree of probability for each one.

Face2Gene is central to the project with GGC, according to the facility’s Director Steve Skinner, M.D., The team at Greenwood will use the app and other tools to link facial features to metabolite profiles for a range of genetic syndromes.

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