ERSILIA OPEN SOURCE INITIATIVE

The Ersilia Open Source Initiative is a UK-based charity whose mission is to strengthen research capacity against infectious and neglected diseases. We do so by providing state-of-the-art artificial intelligence and machine learning (AI/ML) methods for drug discovery and global health.  

AI/ML tools holds the power to revolutionize the drug discovery field, reducing the time and costs to new drug development, but they are not yet broadly implemented in day-to-day experimental research. At EOSI, we aim to popularize and democratize the access to AI/ML methods via the  Ersilia Model Hub, the first unified framework for the distribution of ready-to-use AI/ML models for biomedicine, prioritising infectious and neglected disease areas. 

The Ersilia Model Hub is a free, online, open-source platform where scientists can browse through a catalogue of AI/ML models, select the ones that are relevant to their research and run online predictions without the need to write a single line of code. We are gathering, in a single resource, two classes of models. On the one hand, we collect models developed by third parties and available in scientific publications. On the other hand, we develop models in-house and/or in collaboration with research groups in LMICs. In other words, part of our philanthropic mission is to increase visibility and facilitate access to AI/ML research developed by the community, and part is to contribute AI/ML tools ourselves in order to fulfill unmet global health needs.  The Ersilia Model Hub currently works on a CLI interface (check our GitHub), and the first launch is scheduled for September 2021, including 100 models.

We are a small but mission-driven, committed team with a clear vision: a world with egalitarian access to healthcare. As a starting initiative, your support makes all the difference to us and our mission. 

If you want to know further about the project, please contact us at [email protected]