Aifred becomes finalist for $3M prize

MONTREAL – Aifred Health announced that the XPRIZE jury has selected Aifred Health as one of the three finalists for the IBM Watson AI XPrize. The company is competing for the grand prize of US$3 million, to be awarded in June, 2021. Montreal-based Aifred Health was one of more than 700 applicants for this XPRIZE focused on employing AI to solve the world’s grand challenges.

Teams were judged by world-leading experts in AI who conducted extensive due diligence and reviews of each team’s application and their ability to meet the key criteria of achieved technical impact; evidenced real-world impact; scalability of real-world impact; and ethics and safety.

“To be named as one of the Top 3 global AI teams in the world is an incredible accomplishment and endorsement of our approach to better serving patients suffering from depression. Over 4 years, our AI technology has been reviewed by some of the leading AI experts on the planet. We are indebted to the XPRIZE organization and IBM Watson for their leadership and vision throughout the process. The prize money, along with our C$4 million seed financing, is being used to fund the clinical trial required for regulatory approval of our AI decision support device for depression and further development of our therapy-agnostic AI tool in other areas of high unmet medical need,” said Marina Massingham (pictured), CEO.

Dr. David Benrimoh, chief scientific officer added: “We began Aifred Health because of the IBM Watson AI XPRIZE and our belief that modern AI tools could be developed and applied to identify patterns in clinical data that would allow the use of simple personal information to choose the right treatment for each individual patient. I want to thank all of the incredibly talented people who have worked with and supported us for their contributions to creating and building Aifred.”

About Aifred Health
Aifred Health is delivering clinician-focused solutions for the treatment of mental health including electronic access to best practices guidelines and a world-class AI approach to providing decision support for personalized therapeutic choices for clinical depression. Aifred is initiating its regulatory approval clinical trial for depression in H1/2021.