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NEX Health Intelligence, an ³Ô¹ÏºÚÁÏ startup, has raised €1 million to further develop its AI platform for predicting the appearance and spread of infections within hospitals.

Maths meets medicine in , a start-up created at ³Ô¹ÏºÚÁÏ that is using artificial intelligence to help hospitals detect, predict and prevent highly resistant infections before they spread. Founded in 2022 by Dr Ashleigh Myall during his PhD studies, the company has just raised €1 million (£900,000) in pre-seed investment. 

AI has the potential to enable intelligent decision support in high-stakes environments, enabling healthcare teams to act faster and allocate resources smarter. Ben Wirz and Isabella Vahdati Brighteye Ventures

“AI has the potential to enable intelligent decision support in high-stakes environments, enabling healthcare teams to act faster and allocate resources smarter, fundamentally transforming how clinical teams work,” said Ben Wirz and Isabella Vahdati, Founding Partner and Principal respectively at , which led the investment round. 

According to the World Health Organization, one in ten patients admitted to hospital acquire a healthcare-associated infection during their stay. This results in extended time in the hospital, avoidable deaths, operational disruption and billions in annual healthcare costs. 

Dr Myall became interested in the spread of infections after volunteering in hospitals during the COVID-19 pandemic. “I realised the real challenge wasn’t just the number of admissions, it was how quickly infections spread between vulnerable patients already inside hospitals,” he recalls. “So, during my PhD at ³Ô¹ÏºÚÁÏ, I began building AI systems to predict where infections would spread next. That became the foundation for NEX.”

“The research applied new mathematical techniques to understand how infections transmit through hospitals, uncover hidden links between patients and wards, and predict where infections may move next,” says , who supervised Dr Myall’s PhD in the Department of Mathematics. 

The technique builds contact-networks from routinely collected hospital bed records, identifying variables that are strong predictors of when and where transmissible infections will spread, days in advance. This allows hospitals to take steps such as isolating the patients concerned.

“As antimicrobial resistance continues to rise, strengthening how we detect and prevent infections within healthcare is critical,” said , Director of the , who co-supervised Dr Myall’s PhD in the Department of Infectious Disease.

Nurtured at ³Ô¹ÏºÚÁÏ

While developing the idea for the company, Dr Myall and his co-founder, Dr Chang Ho Yoon from the University of Oxford, were supported by the enterprising ecosystem at ³Ô¹ÏºÚÁÏ. They explored the potential for creating a company in the , ³Ô¹ÏºÚÁÏ’s flagship entrepreneurial competition. And after setting up NEX, they took part in the , a programme that supports early career researchers with high-potential medical technologies to achieve their innovation aspirations.

They also participated in the , , and a mission to Singapore. The present funding round was launched at the 2025 investor showcase in 2025.

“³Ô¹ÏºÚÁÏ’s enterprising ecosystem has been critical to NEX’s journey,” Dr Myall says. “As a first-time founder, the programmes, mentors and support network gave me the advice and confidence I needed to take the research out of the lab and begin building a company around it. We’re incredibly grateful for that support.”

With a total of €1.4 million in funding raised to date, NEX is already working across multiple hospital sites. In the UK, evaluation work is underway across two London NHS Trusts and a new deployment in the north-west of England. Internationally, the platform has been deployed at a major military hospital in Southeast Asia and is expanding through regional projects, including at one of Malaysia’s largest public hospitals.

The fresh funding will be used to scale-up deployment across UK and international hospitals, complete UK regulatory and clinical safety work, and generate real-world clinical and economic evidence from live sites.

Main picture: Getty Images