Company: Deep Medical
Co-Founders: Benyamin Deldar & David Hanbury
Website: https://www.deep-medical.ai/
About Deep Medical
Deep Medical was founded in 2020 by Dr Benyamin Deldar and machine learning engineer David Hanbury with one clear mission: to reduce NHS waiting times from 18 months to just 18 weeks.
The company’s AI predicts and reduces missed hospital appointments – helping to cut waiting lists and improve access to care. It is 87% accurate at predicting patient attendance. Deep Medical understands the real-world barriers including work, caregiving and transport challenges often impact a patient’s ability to attend an appointment, making its solution especially powerful in addressing health inequalities.
This is all in the context of NHS waiting lists hitting record highs, in part due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Today, more than 6 million people are waiting for care in the UK. At the same time, an estimated 8 million hospital slots go unused each year due to no-shows, and a further 4 million are lost to short-notice cancellations. Deep Medical is working to unlock this hidden capacity within the system so more patients can be seen.
Deep Medical’s AI analyses historical and behavioural data – including patient records, traffic, weather, and work patterns – to identify patients most at risk of missing their appointments. Crucially, the technology also delivers hyper-personalised interventions. For example, if a patient is visually impaired, the system might send a voice message instead of a text reminder to help ensure they attend.
To support its mission, Deep Medical has teamed up with Cisco to reduce backlogs, Uber to help patients get to and from appointments more easily, and UCL to collaborate with top AI talent worldwide.
Deep Medical also ensures that patient data is protected. Deep Medical has prioritised privacy from day one, and does not use patients’ personal or medical data to train its AI. The data is anonymised, private and secure and sits outside of the scope for regulations like GDPR.
The impact so far has been huge. At Mid and South Essex NHS Foundation Trust, a six-month pilot in 2023 cut missed appointments by 30%, saving 377 slots and enabling almost 2,000 more patients to receive care. The success led to a full roll-out across the Trust in July 2024, with projected annual savings of £27.5 million.
Elsewhere, two hospitals in Warwickshire saw a 33% increase in attendance and a 29% reduction in missed appointments. In Coventry and Warwickshire, Deep Medical’s process mining technology improved the way appointments were booked, reducing missed appointments from 10% to just 4%.
Deep Medical has already demonstrated a proven track record of unlocking capacity and cutting waiting lists. Further NHS integrations are in the pipeline, alongside plans for hospital partnerships in the US.
