A non-profit research foundation dedicated to transforming patient care through open, collaborative innovation
Five years ago, Abdulla Hourani — a physician by training — found himself at a crossroad. While deeply committed to patient care, he grew increasingly aware of the limitations medicine faced when divorced from the power of data, algorithms, and modern technology. Early in his medical journey, while caring for critically ill patients in overstretched hospitals, he began to notice patterns: missed early warnings, fragmented data, and decisions made in silos. It wasn't just the absence of information — it was the absence of synthesis.
Moved by countless patient stories and encounters — Abdulla began exploring beyond the clinic walls. Late nights after hospital shifts, he self-taught himself software engineering, statistics, and machine learning. What started as a personal curiosity soon evolved into a mission: to bridge the world of medicine with the world of computation.
This journey gave rise to Project Quintessence, a non-profit research collective that unites top-tier engineers, clinicians, and data scientists under one goal: to radically improve patient outcomes using AI, robotics, and mathematical intelligence. Abdulla envisioned a new kind of team — one where the sharpest minds in tech and medicine worked side by side, not in competition, but in synergy. Not to build the next flashy gadget, but to solve what truly matters — life, death, and everything in between.
Unlike traditional companies, Project Quintessence was born as a research-first initiative — not for profit, but for purpose. Every tool built, every algorithm trained, is open-source, explainable, and aligned with the needs of patients, not markets. The team tackles problems ranging from predicting ICU deterioration and personalizing cardiac treatment, to using vision models to interpret diagnostic scans with higher accuracy.
Of course, it wasn't always smooth. Early models failed. Ideas flopped. Grant applications were rejected. But these failures didn't break the mission — they sharpened it. Abdulla's clinical eye reminded him that real change requires humility, iteration, and listening — to both the data and the people behind it.
And with each patient whose life might have been different, the fire grew stronger.
Project Quintessence now operates at the cutting edge — integrating large language models (LLMs), real-time hospital data streams, robotics for precision diagnostics, and novel deep learning architectures for predicting treatment response.
But at its heart, the mission is simple: to make medicine more intelligent, more compassionate, and more proactive.
Project Quintessence — Where Medicine Meets Intelligence
Project Quintessence is a non-profit, independent research foundation dedicated to transforming patient care through open, collaborative innovation at the intersection of medicine, artificial intelligence, robotics, and mathematical science.
Founded by Abdulla Hourani, a medical doctor and visionary technologist, the foundation was born from lived experience in hospitals — where the consequences of delayed decisions, fragmented data, and outdated systems too often cost lives. It was here that a simple but profound idea emerged: what if we could re-engineer how medicine thinks, sees, and responds — using the full power of modern computation?
To radically improve patient outcomes by designing, developing, and deploying open-source, clinically aligned, and ethically grounded AI systems for healthcare.
We build and evaluate machine learning and deep learning models to predict outcomes, personalize treatments, and automate diagnostics in critical care, cardiology, neurology, and oncology. Our research spans multimodal data — vitals, labs, ECGs, imaging, notes, and genomics — powered by explainable models.
We explore how large language models can be used to extract and reason over clinical narratives, create AI agents to assist physicians, and make unstructured medical data actionable.
From AI-assisted procedural planning to robotic-enhanced diagnostics, we pioneer the use of robotics and computer vision to bring precision to clinical environments.
Our work includes the development of novel biostatistical methods, causal inference models, and predictive frameworks that enable hospitals and researchers to understand risk, optimize care, and drive outcome-based research.
We are proudly open-source. All our tools, models, and research pipelines are made freely available to empower under-resourced hospitals, academic centers, and independent researchers around the world.
A globally distributed collective of:
We believe access to life-saving technology shouldn't depend on where a patient lives or how much a hospital can spend. That's why our foundation focuses not on commercialization, but democratization — making AI tools that are scalable, transparent, and truly centered on the people they serve.