Tesla chair Robyn Denholm joins Australian AI healthcare start-up

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Tesla chair Robyn Denholm has joined the board of an Australian healthcare start-up backed by Hong Kong billionaire Li Ka-shing, as it seeks global adoption of its artificial intelligence-based medical imaging technology.

Harrison.ai, which has funding from Li’s Horizon Ventures, has named Denholm to its board in a signal that the Sydney-based business is looking to expand rapidly into international markets.

The company’s technology is used to sift through chest X-rays and CT brain scans to identify abnormalities. Its AI is not meant to diagnose patients but instead flags the most serious scans to clinicians and acts as a “safety net” to prevent misdiagnosis. The company plans to expand into prostate biopsies next year.

Aengus Tran, co-founder and chief executive, said Denholm — who is also chair of Australia’s technology council — had been advising the company in recent years in her role as a partner at Blackbird Ventures, the venture capital company that also invested in the start-up.

“She has a breadth of experience in technology and international business,” Tran said of the Tesla chair’s record. “This is a very welcome development as we step through the next stage of growth.”

Denholm said in a statement that she hoped to work with the board to “realise the Harrison.ai mission to scale global healthcare capacity using AI”.

The company was co-founded in 2018 by Tran, who emigrated from Ho Chi Minh City to Sydney to train as a cardiac surgeon. After helping to develop an AI system that could identify the most fertile egg for use in IVF treatment during his student years, Tran said he opted against a medical career. Instead, he launched Harrison.ai with his brother Dimitry, with the aim of using AI to improve diagnoses.

Horizon, which has backed the likes of DeepMind, Spotify and Zoom, was an early investor in the start-up, which has raised almost A$160mn (US$109mn) from funds including Atlassian co-founder Scott Farquhar’s Skip Capital and from its partners in the medical sector including A$16bn ASX-listed Sonic Healthcare and radiology company I-MED.

Tran said its AI was already used by one in three radiologists in Australia, and the company has plans to become a global player. It has expanded into the UK through trials with some NHS trusts, as well as in Asia in the past year. It has also received approval from US regulators to launch there.

“Global is certainly what we’re thinking. It was built to be a global solution,” he said. “That is the benefit of AI — you build it once and scale it like software. You are not hiring 1,000 radiologists.”

Australia’s healthcare sector has boomed in recent years as government efforts to create a biotech industry have stimulated development. A report by AusBiotech, the industry trade body, showed there were 192 life sciences companies listed on Australia’s stock exchange in 2022 with a combined market value of A$233bn, up from A$170bn in 2019.

Denholm hails from Milperra in the western suburbs of Sydney and spent much of her career in telecoms and technology companies including Juniper Networks, Telstra and Sun Microsystems.

She took over as chair of Tesla from Elon Musk in 2018 after he bowed to pressure to split his roles at the top of the electric-car maker.