BenevolentAI has joined forces with Action Against AMD charity in an attempt to use its artificial intelligence (AI) technology to find new cures to the disease.

The partnership will find research methods and possible treatments for the disease, which currently only has a limited number of treatment options available. AMD, Age-related Macular Degeneration, is one of the leading causes of blindness in the UK affecting more than 600,000 in the UK right now.

Through the partnership BenevolentAI will use its AI platform to review and understand the vast amount of data, from scientific papers, clinical trial information, images and additional data sets related to AMD. The technology will then carry out an analytical process to understand more about the disease, in order to find potential prevention methods of AMD as well as potential treatments.

BenevolentAI embarks on new AI healthcare venture
The venture aims to find a cure or better treatment for AMD.

“AI offers an exciting new way to approach medical research. We must find new treatments for AMD because it will affect tens of millions of older people across the world in the coming decades. We are delighted to be collaborating with BAI on this ground-breaking project,” Action Against AMD Chair, Rob Bryan said.

AI will enhance the capabilities doctors and researchers have to not only learn more about AMD, its symptoms and causes but also predict future trends for patient and possible treatments.

Dr. Jackie Hunter, CEO BenevolentBio, the bioscience subsidiary of BenevolentAI said: “BenevolentAI’s deep learning linguistic models, knowledge graph and algorithms will be applied to create a better understanding of AMD, generate new insights and identify promising new research areas for treating this devastating condition.”

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The AI company has also collaborated with four charities, including Blind Veterans UK, Fight for Sight, the Macular Society and Scottish War Blinded. Collaborating with the four charities will also bring additional funding to the research, as well as developing an intervention to stop people losing their sight from the condition.

This project is not the first BenevolentAI has embarked on within the healthcare world. Just a month ago the AI company announced the acquisition of a research centre in Cambridge, which aims to quicken the development process of drugs programmes using AI.