Irish healthtech start-up xWave Technologies has closed an over-subscribed €1.3m seed funding round led by a number of private investors, including €250,000 from Enterprise Ireland.

Headquartered at NovaUCD, the start-up is on a mission to save lives by ensuring that patients get the best test first.

In 2021, xWave Technologies launched xRefer, its smart radiology referral platform.

xRefer uses market-leading evidence to support clinicians in ordering the most appropriate radiology scan for their patient.

As a cloud-based platform, it enables clinicians to quickly create and send evidence-based digital radiology referrals from anywhere, to any hospital or imaging centre - whether public or private.

xWave said it has has already demonstrated a positive impact in Irish hospitals where use of xRefer has reduced the average time taken to create, send and have a referral reviewed by a radiologist by 99.6%.

This has enabled scheduling of patient appointments to occur a week and a half earlier on average.

The company also said that the national roll-out of xRefer across the Irish healthcare system will reduce duplicate and unnecessary radiology referrals by more than 60%.

This will result in a significant reduction on the radiology waiting list that continues to grow post-Covid, it added.

Mitchell O'Gorman, CEO of xWave Technologies, said the data the company has already seen from the use of xRefer in the Irish healthcare system indicates it can potentially eliminate radiology waiting lists in Ireland and abroad by removing unnecessary tests and ensuring that patients get the best test first.

"We already have partnerships in place with two of the largest radiology societies in the world, the European Society of Radiology and the Royal College of Radiologists in the UK," Mr O'Gorman said.

"This funding will enable xWave capitalise on commercial opportunities that we now have in the Irish, UK, and Northern European markets," he added.

The company recently submitted an international patent application, in partnership with University College Dublin, to use AI and machine learning to build out the next generation of diagnostic referral tools, with a greater focus on personalised and predictive medicine.

Work on this collaborative research project is already underway with CeADAR, Ireland's Centre for Applied AI based at UCD.

The project, led by Ricardo Simon Carbajo, CeADAR's Head of Innovation and Development, has been funded through the Enterprise Ireland Innovation Partnership Programme