Homegrown AI medtech Harrison.ai has laid off some local staff and launched a US business, less than two years after it landed $32 million from the federal government to keep the company in Australia.
Harrison.ai made some workers in Australia redundant earlier this year, and others left after the company doubled down on the internal use of AI tools, ABC News reported.
The changes came amid a push into the US market, with the launch of a separate business that pays clinicians to use its products.
Harrison.ai offers AI-based technology that can review CT scans and X-rays and help in the detection and diagnosis of medical conditions.
The company was founded by brothers Aengus and Dimitry Tran in 2018, and its first product used AI to assist with the selection of embryos for IVF.
Harrison.ai was among the early companies based at Harbour City Labs, the Sydney accelerator hub operated by ACS to help deep-tech businesses scale.
The company’s products are now used in more than 40 countries, and are available to half of all Australian radiologists, according to Harrison.ai.
Harrison.ai has raised about $333 million in funding.
The startup was valued at nearly $400 million early last year as part of a funding round that included a $32 million investment from the Australian government’s National Reconstruction Fund.
At the time, National Reconstruction Fund Corporation (NRFC) chair Martijn Wilder said this investment would “ensure that the company continues to base its operations in Australia”.
A US venture
Harrison.ai has since launched a US-based teleradiology service, Frontier Radiology, according to ABC News.
This company’s business model involves hiring doctors to use Harrison.ai technology.
Frontier Radiology “delivers consistent, high-quality diagnostic imaging for hospitals, health systems and patients throughout the US”, and will “unite radiologists and intelligent technology to bring reliable, efficient and clinically excellent reporting to health systems nationwide”, its website says.
It adds that Harrison.ai provides the “operational backbone for AI-first radiology”.
Following the funding round early last year, Harrison.ai accelerated its rollout in the US, and established a North American presence in Boston.
AI coaches
ABC News also reported that a number of Australia-based Harrison.ai employees were made redundant earlier this year, and others chose to leave after the company’s internal restructure that turned all workers into a “player-coach” of AI agents.
Harrison.ai workers are now responsible for a “fleet of AI agents”.
“Every manager is a player-coach,” Harrison.ai told employees, as reported by ABC News.
“Every team members [sic] an agent orchestrator.”
In a statement, NRFC said it was aware of Harrison.ai’s shift and said it was a result of the company moving from the product development stage to commercialisation and expanding its technology around the world.
“As a result, the mix of skills and roles needed for this phase are evolving,” NRFC said in a statement.
“NRFC remains confident about the long-term future of Harrison.ai, its commitment to scaling globally while remaining in Australia and its ability to deliver better health outcomes for millions of people across the globe.”
A partnership between Harrison.ai and Australia’s largest radiology chain, I-Med Radiology Network, in late 2024 raised privacy concerns around the use of medical information of patients to train AI mode.
The partnership saw the radiology chain give hundreds of thousands of patient medical scans to the Australian startup, potentially without the consent of the patients.
Harrison.ai at the time said that all the data provided was de-identified.
The Office of the Australian Information Commissioner (OAIC) launched preliminary inquiries into this issue but opted to not conduct a full investigation.
OAIC was “satisfied” that the patient data had been sufficiently de-identified and that it was “no longer personal information for the purposes of the Privacy Act”.
ACS is the publisher of Information Age.
