Max Kelsen CEO Nick Therkelsen-Terry
Brisbane-based artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) business, Max Kelsen is taking part in a project to apply AI to analyse the behaviour of COVID-19 in intensive care patients in a collaboration between the University of Queensland and the COVID-19 Critical Care Consortium.
The consortium is collecting data from 50 countries and more than 350 hospitals globally.
In its collaboration with Dr Sally Shrapnel’s data analytics team at the University of Queensland, Max Kelsen will be applying AI to enable the project consortium to analyse millions of data inputs about patient responses to the disease to rapidly improve the understanding of risk factors, treatment efficacy strategies and other important information.
To carry out these massive calculations without the application of AI and ML, would take humans dozens of years, according to Max Kelsen, whereas the compute power and analytics can provide valuable insight in days, or hours, speeding up the potential for appropriate patient care responses in emergency care settings.
Max Kelsen’s engagement with the COVID-19 Critical Care Consortium, together with its work with other medical and life sciences projects and private industry, has led to a significant increase in its workforce over the past three months.
The Brisbane company has grown from 18 staff in March to 34 and it is expecting to hire at least another 16 highly skilled engineers, biologists, data scientists and other Australian based researchers over the next six months.
Max Kelsen applies AI and ML to analyse complex data sets for customers, deploying industry applicable, in-production solutions for customers globally, across a wide range of industries including healthcare, financial services, retail, travel and the public sector.
Max Kelsen CEO and co-founder, Nick Therkelsen-Terry, said the company’s growth partly reflected the maturing of the AI and ML industry in Australia and the realisation that these technologies can significantly increase business value.
“Artificial intelligence and related technologies are the quiet achievers in helping humanity accelerate our understanding of all kinds of complex issues, from COVID-19, where we are working with the scientific community, to chronic diseases, and economic challenges such as improving supply chains in critical industries,” Therkelsen-Terry said.
“There is an opportunity for Australia to lead this industry globally, but we need the people with the right skills and the creation of the Queensland AI Hub is a key milestone in the development of the industry, including in regional areas of Queensland and Australia generally.”
Recently the Queensland government announced a $5.5 million funding injection into the AI industry to supercharge the growth of talent and skills, through the creation of Australia’s first AI Hub.
Max Kelsen is a founding member of the Queensland AI Hub, together with IntelliHQ, KJR, 9 Points and ArKademi. Consortium partners include The University of Queensland, Queensland University of Technology and KPMG.
Recently, Max Kelsen became the third Amazon Web Services (AWS) partner in Australia to attain machine learning (ML) competency status.
