# New award offers charities chance to harness AI for medical research

- Link: https://fundraising.co.uk/2017/11/15/new-award-offers-charities-chance-harness-ai-medical-research/
- Published: 2017-11-15T08:00:28+00:00
- Author: Melanie May

**The Association of Medical Research Charities (AMRC) and BenevolentAI have launched
a new award giving UK medical research charities the opportunity to harness artificial
intelligence (AI) to help develop new treatments and therapies for diseases.**

 

The [BenevolentAI Award](https://www.amrc.org.uk/blog/the-benevolentai-awards-2017)
will be given to a single charity applicant once a year. [BenevolentAI](http://www.benevolent.ai)
will offer the winning applicant access to the company’s technology platform in 
order to solve specific research challenges the charity is facing. For example, 
this could be to carry out deep investigation in a specific disease, create a better
understanding of the disease, identify new areas and approaches in R&D and accelerate
research towards new treatments and cures.

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The award is open to:

 

 * The All AMRC member medical charities big and small, in any disease area
 * Individual charities or collaborations between charities
 * Charities working with academic partners (not industry partners however)

 

[Applications](https://www.amrc.org.uk/blog/the-benevolentai-awards-2017) for the
award opened this week and the deadline for submissions is 31 January 2018. Jackie
Hunter, CEO of BenevolentBio, the bioscience subsidiary of BenevolentAI, and Aisling
Burnand, CEO of the [AMRC](https://www.amrc.org.uk/), will access applications and
choose a winner, to be announced at the AMRC & ABPI Patients First Conference on
20 March 2018.

 

Jackie Hunter, CEO of BenevolentBio, said:

 

> “Most scientific breakthroughs are made by analysing data, but we live in a world
> where vast quantities of data make the discovery of new drugs and treatments for
> disease very difficult. We use AI to solve this issue and want to offer medical
> research charities the chance to benefit from the successes we have had a a company
> in developing, validating and commercialising this technology.”

 

Aisling Burnand MBE, Chief Executive of the AMRC, added:

 

> “Getting new treatments to people affected by life threatening and life limiting
> illnesses is of paramount importance to medical research charities. To do this
> we have to constantly embrace innovation, new ways of thinking, new ways of funding
> and use every tool in the box. Increasingly our members are recognising the vital
> role that advanced technology can play in accelerating their work. The opportunity
> to have BenevolentAI work on a project for one of our members for a year is a 
> very exciting prospect which could give that research process a huge kick start.”

 * **[Bad AI comes from bad data](https://fundraising.co.uk/2018/02/20/bad-artificial-intelligence-comes-bad-data/)**(
   20 February 2018)
 * **[AI workshop & funding offer from Tech Trust & Microsoft](https://fundraising.co.uk/2018/07/19/ai-workshop-funding-offer-tech-trust-microsoft/)**(
   19 July 2018)
 * **[AI to be used to tackle global issues in new digital initiative](https://fundraising.co.uk/2019/02/05/ai-used-tackle-global-issues-new-digital-initiative/)**(
   5 February 2019)

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