DIAGNOSTICS

Aron Cohen, Ze'ev Russak, David Nitsan, and a team of PhDs and doctors have been grinding in diagnostic AI since 2009—yes, fifteen years before ChatGPT made everyone suddenly care about machine learning. Formerly Azure PCR, Diagnostics (diagnostics.ai) has spent over a decade perfecting pcr.ai, their flagship platform that automates qPCR testing for infection diagnostics. They're holding internationally patented AI-based learning machines that replicate expert clinical technician decision-making, which is a fancy way of saying their AI thinks like a lab pro. Their whole pitch: better accuracy, lower costs, improved patient safety. In diagnostics, errors aren't bugs—they're lives. This team has apparently been solving that problem while the rest of the world was just figuring out what AI even meant.

What makes Diagnostics interesting is the team itself. They've got Prof Brian Glenville and Prof Rory Gunson doing the academic heavy lifting, plus Dr Ron Kagan and Dr Mark Zuckerman bringing the clinical credibility. That's four PhDs and doctors on one team, which is more scientific firepower than most Silicon Valley AI startups have in their entire cap table. The UK-based company has been quietly building proprietary patents and automating what used to require manual expertise. PCR testing is the backbone of infection detection—COVID, HIV, hepatitis, you name it—and Diagnostics is turning that process into something a machine can do with expert-level consistency. Fifteen years in, they're still here. That's not a pivot. That's focus.