London and Chicago, 16th July, 2026: Northwestern Medicine, one of the United States’ leading academic healthcare systems, and global accelerator Founders Factory have unveiled the first cohort of leading AI founders from the UK and Europe as part of a new cross-border healthcare accelerator, aimed at shaping the future of health systems and modes of patient care through technological advancements.

The Northwestern Medicine and Founders Factory healthcare accelerator aims to connect world-class European AI talent with one of America’s leading academic health systems to scale next-generation, AI-enabled health technologies.

AI-enabled technologies are set to play a critical role in the long-term infrastructure of global healthcare systems. As the sector seeks new ways to support ageing populations, rising rates of chronic disease, and increasingly stretched medical teams, the pace of AI innovation is enabling the reengineering of the entire care continuum—from prevention and diagnosis to treatment, hospital operations, and long-term remote monitoring.

The accelerator offers participating companies the opportunity to test, deploy, and scale their solutions with Northwestern Medicine and its broader ecosystem of partners, unlocking access to the world’s largest healthcare market.

Northwestern Medicine is one of the United States’ premier integrated healthcare systems (11 hospitals, more than 5,400 affiliated physicians, research facilities, and 200+ outpatient and diagnostic sites), anchored by Northwestern Memorial Hospital in Chicago. It also operates in the UK through a strategic international collaboration with The London Clinic, the largest independent charitable hospital in the UK.

The New Cohort: The rise of AI-driven healthcare

The latest cohort highlights the rise of agentic and AI-driven healthcare solutions, spanning oncology, medical imaging and neurotechnology, while also rethinking the operational and administrative systems healthcare providers depend on.

The six investments are:

• Uncovr: The surgical AI firm founded by Ines Iraki, Johann Diep, and Prof. Eric Vibert (Chief of Surgery at Paris’ Ap-HP) is transforming how surgery is analyzed, documented, coded, and learned. The firm (which just closed a $6M seed round) is capturing the data needed to train models that could eventually enable autonomous procedures (Paris, France and New York, USA)

• Genie Fertility: This AI discovery platform, co-founded by scientists Anoushka Menon unlocks new molecular biomarkers to better understand reproductive health (London, UK) Founder(s):

• Nucleo: This AI-first medtech startup is building the infrastructure layer for automated oncology diagnostics, designed to cut the time from cancer diagnosis to treatment from approx. 10 weeks down to 10 days (San Francisco, USA)

• Matricis: A medical-grade AI Copilot to support earlier endometriosis detection, assisting radiologists with women's pelvic MRI reads (Paris, France)

• Myonerv: a breakthrough British neurotechnology solution designed to transform stroke rehabilitation with the help of its wearable medical device for monitoring and treating stroke-induced paralysis (Cambridge, UK)

• Aykua: A digital platform that eliminates FMLA, disability, and accommodation paperwork for US clinics. It handles patient request submissions, payment processing, and medical record analysis so administrative staff can focus on patient care (Cambridge, UK)

George Northcott, President, Founders Factory, added: “We’re excited to back founders who are building the future of healthcare with technical ambition and real-world purpose. By pairing European AI talent with Northwestern Medicine’s clinical depth, we’re creating a cross-border environment, where driven founders have access to best-in-class, real-world healthcare settings where they can build, validate and scale solutions that can make a difference for patients and clinicians alike.”