Africa’s health sector has been a cause for concern for decades. Millions of people die from diseases that could have been treated if diagnosed early. Studies show that it can take him two weeks or more to get test results back at some hospitals. Two weeks is a death sentence if you are really sick and need urgent medical care. The use of innovative technology to solve this life-threatening inefficiency is commendable. Kenyan startup Neural Labs is building such technology.
Founded by data scientists and friends Tom Kinyanjui Njoroge and Paul Ndirangu, the startup uses deep learning and computer vision to identify diseases in real-time. The company’s AI algorithm, NeuralSight™, can identify more than 20 respiratory, heart and breast conditions.
“Our solution uses intelligent tools to identify diseases, and it was inspired by pre-existing medical problems on the continent,” explains CEO Njoroge. “Hospitals are over-utilized, under-resourced, and service providers are straining their workload.”
There is a serious shortage of medical physicists in Africa, with only 1040 medical physicists in the entire continent. Over 90% of his radiologists in Africa work in urban or peri-urban settings. This means that resources are even more strained in rural areas where more than 80% of the population resides.
With the help of Neural Labs, the number of radiologists needed for diagnosis and image processing is reduced, and the time it takes to do so is also reduced. Using innovative technology, they are able to screen images in seconds.
Data collection plays an important role for businesses as information gaps exist in the healthcare sector. Neural Labs uses AI to collect previous scenarios of certain ailments, document them, and train algorithms to identify such ailments. We also work with radiologists in clinical trials to ensure our solutions are relevant and accurate. The startup also uses Sensitivity, a tool used in software regulation, especially FDA approval, to understand everything and set limits to consider when using the technology.
Neural Labs is currently training models from two demographic regions in Africa. Nairobi, Dakar, and they are considering partnering with more hospitals, institutions and laboratories to train their models and improve their accuracy. Since then, they have partnered with organizations such as UNICEF and Senegal’s Ministry of Health to help them reach their goals.
