Stowmarket-based Orbital Global has won the prestigious Innovation of the Year award at the 2021 OTCToolbox Consumer Healthcare Industry Awards, for its artificial intelligence digital assistant, VirtTuri.

Developed in partnership with the University of Essex and Cardiff University, VirtTuri is a piece of AI tech designed to be used on websites, apps and even in social media to answer healthcare questions. These might relate to a particular ailment, to the patient-information leaflet with a particular medicine, or even actions a patient should take.

By using machine learning, the accuracy of VirtTuri increases with every use. Judges described it as "a process which makes a step change and embodies a fundamental change. It does this in a technological way to help improve consumer outcomes".

Peter Brady, chief executive at Orbital Global, comments: ‘We are extremely proud of VirtTuri and know it performs brilliantly well, having already been adopted and rigorously tested by leading consumer healthcare brands, Sudocrem and Infacol. The technology is now ready for extensive rollout to the consumer healthcare industry, which is hugely exciting.

"Artificial intelligence is one of the most important technologies of the 21st century. It is already impacting our daily lives and will continue to do so in the future. With this in mind, we are constantly innovating and plan to enhance VirtTuri even further, with the development of a patented visual avatar component later this year."

For further information see www.orbitalglobalresearch.com