Health scaleup Numan has rolled out a generative AI assistant which it says will support its obesity management offering.
Numan, which has raised tens of millions of pounds of funding – most recently £15m in 2022 – made a name for itself with a series of adverts around men’s health, most memorably erectile dysfunction.
It says its health assistant is built on a proprietary safety framework to ensure responsible, scalable AI in healthcare. It is the first of a suite of AI-driven patient engagement and support tools that it aims to launch in 2025.
Key to this is their Aegis Monitoring System, a unique platform that’s been built from the ground-up and monitors, evaluates and safeguards every patient interaction, setting Numan apart from other, retrofitted AI solutions in consumer healthcare.
More than 3,000 patients are using Numan’s health assistant as the company continues to roll out in beta. It says the assistant blends large language model (LLM) technology with expert-designed prompts, providing real-time, personalised health guidance under rigorous safety and regulatory standards.
The assistant will initially support Numan’s obesity management services which helped patients achieve a total weight loss of over 200,000kg – the equivalent of 17 double decker buses.
“The key to improving healthcare is creating continuous, personalised experiences that can scale to millions,” said Sokratis Papafloratos, CEO and founder of Numan.
“That’s why we’re building our own in-house frameworks and technology that can fundamentally reshape how healthcare is delivered.
“In 2024, we saw incredible growth with our obesity management programme, and the next step is to make these services available to even more people. Our new AI-powered Health Assistant is central to that mission.
“The fact is healthcare faces a critical gap in delivering personalised, scalable solutions, particularly for stigmatised conditions like obesity. With our proprietary safety frameworks and patient-centred AI, Numan is bridging this gap.
“We’re one of the first companies to develop and deploy personalised, clinically sound AI solutions directly to obesity patients – and we’re committed to setting the gold standard as we do so.”
Dr Paul Sacher, clinical scientist at Numan and a global leader in AI and digital health, said: “Our focus is on advancing AI-driven healthcare that is both safe and highly personalised.
“From the very beginning, we recognised that scalability and safety must go hand in hand, which is why we built Aegis from the ground up. As an automated monitoring and evaluation system, Aegis addresses a key challenge in healthcare AI: ensuring rigorous oversight and clinical accuracy, even as systems scale to support thousands – or millions – of patients.
“We are equally committed to a patient-centred approach, integrating innovative features that adapt in real time to individual needs and behaviours. We’re developing dynamic, phenotype-based support that evolves in real time with each patient.
“This includes a scientifically validated cognitive behavioural evaluation tool – created by our team of psychologists, behavioural experts and data scientists – to help identify and address barriers to successful weight management. This will ensure that we provide a truly personalised and holistic healthcare journey for every patient.”