xWave
xWave is an Irish software suite for the medical imaging pathway, from digital referral to clinical decision support, automated vetting and audit. It serves hospitals, radiology teams, referring clinicians and health insurers on a Best Test First basis.
What is xWave?
xWave Technologies is an Irish company headquartered at 20 Harcourt Street in Dublin, with a UK office in Leeds and a base at NovaUCD. By its own account it was founded in 2020 by a group of leading radiologists who set out to fix the problems they met in their own practice. The stated ambition is transforming how healthcare professionals manage diagnostics with intelligent technology, under a product signature of Best Test First.
The suite is modular. xWave Refer handles order communications and acts as the digital front door for examination requests: it replaces paper, pushes real-time scheduling, reporting and completion updates, and follows a request through to its report across radiology, pathology, endoscopy and physiological sciences. xWave CDS is a configurable rules engine delivering appropriateness, justification and prioritisation guidance in real time, with radiation dose visibility and rules localised by site or territory, embedded into the ordering systems already in use. xWave Vetting builds on CDS: it assesses and categorises incoming requests, auto-protocols them, integrates with the RIS, and converts emails, scanned forms and PDFs into a structured, usable format. xWave Patient IQ is a multi-channel patient acquisition engine that classifies enquiries with AI to route them to the right examination, automates intake and clinical triage, and applies standardised ICD-10 coding for insurer billing. xWave Insight exists in two versions: for providers, interactive dashboards, real-time alerts and request-to-report linkage; for payers, audit of thousands of claims at scale, provider benchmarking and support for declined claims.
The decision layer carries recognised guidelines rather than in-house rules: iRefer from the Royal College of Radiologists, iGuide from the European Society of Radiology and RANZCR iRefer for Australia and New Zealand. Integrations are documented with Soliton IT's Radiology+ RIS, present in more than 150 UK hospitals, and with the Irish EMR iMedDoc, where xWave Refer runs in production at St Vincent's Private Hospital. Partnerships include Qure.ai, the GE Healthcare Edison Accelerator and the UCD-led AINM consortium; named deployments include NHS trusts, the Yorkshire Imaging Collaborative and Alliance Medical UK. The architecture is described as cloud-native invisible intelligence living inside RIS/PACS environments, and the vendor insists it amplifies radiologists rather than replacing them.
What it does
- Replace paper examination requests with tracked digital orders
- Guide the referrer towards the most appropriate test at the point of order
- Vet and justify incoming requests against clinical guidelines
- Trigger the right imaging protocol automatically
- Audit the appropriateness and quality of requests continuously
- Turn patient demand into booked examinations
- Benchmark providers and flag outliers on the payer side
When to use xWave / When not to
A quick filter to help you decide if xWave is the right fit.
When to use xWave
- Radiology departments under pressure that want to cut low-value imaging before it reaches the scanner
- NHS trusts and public health systems working to shorten diagnostic waiting times
- Private hospitals and clinics looking to turn patient demand into booked examinations through Patient IQ
- Payers and health insurers auditing the appropriateness of imaging requests and substantiating declined claims
- Organisations already running a RIS, PACS or EMR that want iRefer or iGuide guidance embedded at the point of order rather than another separate system
When not to use xWave
- Anyone looking for a self-service tool: there is no free trial, no free plan and no online sign-up
- Buyers who need to budget from a published price list, since no rate is disclosed anywhere on the site
- Patients and consumers, as xWave addresses healthcare professionals and health organisations rather than the general public
- Teams shopping for image interpretation or detection AI: xWave works before the scan, on appropriateness, justification and protocol, and the vendor states its technology amplifies radiologists rather than replacing them
- Developers expecting public API documentation or a mobile app, since integration runs through a project with the vendor and no App Store or Google Play listing exists
How to use xWave
A typical end-to-end flow, from setup to results.
- Request a demo through the contact form: there is no online sign-up and no self-service account
- Scope the modules you need, from Refer and CDS to Vetting, Patient IQ and Insight for providers or payers
- Agree the integration with your RIS, PACS or EMR, the interfaces relying on HL7, FHIR and APIs
- Work with the vendor's implementation team on system configuration, vendor interface testing and change control
- Localise the clinical rules for your site or territory and pick the guideline set: iRefer, iGuide or RANZCR iRefer
- Train referrers and radiology staff, then go live with post-go-live stabilisation handled by the project team
- In daily use, referrers raise requests from their usual EMR or clinical portal, or from xWave Refer, and receive decision support as they order
- Radiology picks up requests already vetted, categorised and matched to a proposed protocol inside the RIS
- Clinical and operational managers follow activity through Insight dashboards and real-time alerts
- Access is device-agnostic, and the interface targets WCAG 2.1 AA with keyboard navigation, JAWS, NVDA and VoiceOver support and 300% zoom
Pros & Cons
Pros
- Covers the whole chain rather than a single step: ordering, decision support, vetting, protocolling and audit
- Embeds authoritative clinical guidelines, RCR iRefer, ESR iGuide and RANZCR iRefer, instead of in-house rules
- Fits into the systems already in place, RIS, PACS and EMR, rather than imposing yet another tool
- Verifiable public references, including named NHS trusts, the Yorkshire Imaging Collaborative, Alliance Medical UK and St Vincent's Private Hospital
- ISO 27001 certification claimed and independently audited, with a documented GDPR posture: reachable DPO, enumerated rights and a legal basis per purpose
- Founded and led by radiologists, which anchors product choices in daily practice, and recognised by independent sector awards
- Accessibility taken seriously, with a WCAG 2.1 AA target, a dedicated reporting channel and a one-working-day response commitment
Cons
- No public pricing at all: no rate card, no range and no pricing page, which the full sitemap confirms
- No free trial and no free plan, the only way in being a demo request
- No public API documentation, although the product lives on integrations
- No support address published: only info@ for general contact, dpo@ for data and hello@ for accessibility exist
- No customer DPA and no named sub-processor list, the privacy notice citing categories of third parties only, and no data hosting country or region indicated
- Complete silence on whether customer data is used to train AI models, with no opt-out documented either way
- The terms and conditions cover the website only, not the platform, and the 2021 privacy notice still names the platform xRefer while the catalogue now reads xWave Refer
Pricing & Plans
No price is published. xWave Technologies discloses no amount, in any currency, on any page, and the complete sitemap contains no pricing page; no free plan and no free trial are announced either. The product is sold business to business: access starts with a demo request through the contact form and continues as a scoped implementation project, with commercial terms agreed privately. The only public financial figure concerns the company rather than its rate card, namely annual recurring revenue of €500,000 reported for 2024, and it says nothing about what a hospital, provider or payer would actually pay.
Data, GDPR & hosting
A consolidated view of how xWave handles your data.
GDPR overview
GDPR implementation is documented rather than merely asserted. The privacy notice, in force since 22 March 2021, cites Regulation (EU) 2016/679 explicitly, gives a legal basis for each purpose and lists the full set of data subject rights. A data protection officer answers at dpo@xwave.ie; requests are handled within one month, extended to three for complex cases, free of charge unless manifestly unfounded or excessive. Complaints are directed to the Irish Data Protection Commission. Transfers outside the EEA rest on adequacy decisions or standard contractual clauses, and third parties are bound under Article 28. xWave claims an independently audited ISO 27001 certification, alongside need-to-know access limits, breach notification procedures, staff training and SSL encryption. No Article 27 representative is designated, which is consistent with EU establishment. No customer DPA and no named sub-processor list are published; the minimum age is 16.
Who owns the data?
The privacy notice presents xWave Technologies as a data controller for website visitors, customers, prospective customers, employees and job candidates, and for the use and performance of its cloud platform, which the document still calls xRefer. Nothing published states who owns the patient data processed on behalf of a hospital: the terms and conditions govern the website alone, not the platform, so ownership and reuse of customer data are left to private contract. Intellectual property in the site content belongs to, or is licensed by, xWave Technologies. Individuals are granted the full list of GDPR rights, and the company states it carries out no profiling and no automated decision-making on personal data.
Reuse rights
The published terms and conditions cover the website only. They reserve its content and intellectual property to xWave Technologies, grant no licence to reuse them without permission, and state that nothing on the site constitutes professional medical, clinical or legal advice. For personal data, the privacy notice sets a legal basis per purpose: performance of the contract for the platform and support, consent for marketing, newsletters, forms and job applications, legitimate interest for service security, business operation and usage monitoring, and legal obligation for reporting. Third-party providers handling billing, web publishing, marketing, customer support, email, communication interfaces, web and application hosting and CRM are each bound by an Article 28 contract, and transfers outside the EEA rely on an adequacy decision or standard contractual clauses. The CRM is also fed from public sources, including content people have made public on social media. Whether customer data is reused to train AI models is never addressed, in either direction.
Data retention & training
Hosting summary
No hosting country and no hosting region are stated. The privacy notice never says where data sits; it only covers transfers, indicating that personal data leaving the European Economic Area moves under an adequacy decision or standard contractual clauses. It acknowledges the use of web and application hosting providers without naming any of them, and no sub-processor list is published. On the security side, it claims a secure server, SSL and encryption whenever possible, plus an ISO 27001 certification independently audited. One technical detail should not be mistaken for customer data hosting: the public website is served by Squarespace, resolving to 198.185.159.145 on AS53831, an anycast address observed at a United States node. That tells you where the brochure site is served from, not where clinical or personal data processed by the platform is stored. Any buyer with data residency requirements will have to get that answer in writing from the vendor.
Things to keep in mind
Risks and trade-offs to weigh before adopting xWave.
- The published terms and conditions cover the website only: the contractual terms of the platform itself are not public, and the liability clause excludes data loss and any guarantee that the site remains available
- The vendor states that nothing on the site constitutes professional medical, clinical or legal advice; guideline prompts delivered at the point of order should support clinical judgement, not quietly replace it, and habitual agreement with the machine is a real risk over time
- Nothing is published on whether customer data is used to train AI models, nor on any ability to opt out
- No customer DPA and no named sub-processor list are published, and no data hosting country or region is indicated: a healthcare buyer will have to obtain all three contractually
- The privacy notice dates from 22 March 2021 and still calls the platform xRefer, while the catalogue now spans Refer, CDS, Vetting, Patient IQ and Insight, so its commitments may not have been reviewed since the range expanded
- Attribution to watch: the €9.1 million DTIF award announced in the site's news section went to the AINM consortium led by University College Dublin, in which xWave is one partner among others, and it is not a xWave fundraising
- The site states the company was founded in 2020, while the Irish register records company 605730 as incorporated on 9 June 2017, and no certification beyond ISO 27001 is cited, with no DTAC, DSPT or SOC 2 mentioned
Setup & Integrations
Technical difficulty
Demanding on the IT side, close to invisible for the end user. There is no self-service sign-up: going live means a project with the vendor. xWave advertises a low-effort cloud deployment, device-agnostic access and integration with minimal IT lift, and its modules do sit inside screens clinicians already use. The real work lies elsewhere: RIS, PACS or EMR interfacing over HL7, FHIR and APIs, vendor interface testing, change control and post-go-live stabilisation, all cited by a customer. Clinical rules also have to be localised by site or territory, so expect configuration work alongside the technical effort.
Deployment
Integrations
Behind xWave
Fundraising
Social
Resources
All the official URLs gathered for verification and reference.
Frequently asked questions
What does xWave actually do?
Who is it aimed at?
How much does xWave cost?
Is there a free trial or a free plan?
Which clinical guidelines does the decision support rely on?
Does it integrate with existing systems?
Is there a public API or a mobile app?
How are security and data protection handled?
Is customer data used to train AI models?
Should you pick xWave?
xWave is a niche product in the best sense of the word: built by radiologists for the imaging pathway, with no consumer equivalent. Its credibility rests on two solid things. First, the decision layer carries guidelines the profession already recognises, RCR iRefer, ESR iGuide and RANZCR iRefer, rather than rules invented in-house. Second, the deployments are named and checkable: NHS trusts, the Yorkshire Imaging Collaborative, Alliance Medical UK, and xWave Refer running inside iMedDoc at St Vincent's Private Hospital. For a radiology department drowning in paper referrals and low-value scans, that combination is worth a conversation.
The commercial side is deliberately opaque. There is no price, no published product contract, no public API and no free trial. Everything begins with a demo request and continues as an integration project touching the RIS, PACS or EMR, which makes this a tool for an organisation with a project team rather than something a single clinician can evaluate over a weekend.
The legal documentation is decent but uneven. The GDPR posture is properly set out, with legal bases, a reachable DPO, enumerated rights and the Irish Data Protection Commission as the route for complaints, and ISO 27001 is claimed. Yet the privacy notice dates from March 2021 and still names the platform xRefer, the terms and conditions cover the website alone, and nothing is said about model training on customer data or about where data is hosted. None of these are deal-breakers; they are questions to put in writing before signing. In short, a credible and well-referenced clinical decision and workflow suite for imaging, aimed at institutions able to run an integration project, and best approached with a written list of contractual questions about data.
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