HOW ENVISIONIT
Deep AI wants to Democratise Access to Healthcare in Africa at 2000 X-rays Per Minute Despite Africa having the world’s youngest population, the continent suffers from a shortage of paediatric specialists. Estimates put the number of fellowship trained paediatric radiologists on the continent at less than 20. by Daniel Mpala
1ST QUARTER 2020
IT’S TELLING that a country as developed as South Africa only got its first qualified paediatric radiologist in 2010. That specialist, Dr Jaishree Naidoo, believes that human capacity alone cannot solve the challenges the continent faces in that field. Now, together with co-founders Terence Naidu and Andrei Migatchev, Dr Naidoo is looking to take on the shortage of paediatric specialists with artificial intelligence (AI) through her medtech startup EnvisionIt Deep AI which was launched last year in January.
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“We have achieved an accuracy of 97% across 20 labels of pathology,” she explains. EnvisionIt Deep AI states on its website that its aim is not to replace radiologists. Instead, the company hopes its solution will enable radiologists to prioritise urgent cases and by doing so offer a more “patientcentric” model of health service delivery. Since its launch, the company has been busy working on research and development and is currently conducting clinical trials. At the time of writing, Dr Naidoo said EnvisionIt Deep AI had four consulting radiologists working on the training and validation of its model. “With every model we develop, we require human resources to train and validate the model. Once we have achieved good accuracies on each model the need for the HR is less due to the machine learning capability of our model,” she explained. It’s likely that the company Andrei Migatchev Chief Jaishree Naidoo Chief Terence Naidu Business – whose main backers are Technology Officer Executive Officer Development holdings company Envisionit & Co-founder of EDAI & Co-founder of EDAI & Co-founder of EDAI Capital Solutions – will be first to market in South Africa with AI in radiology. “We knew with technology, we can get a machine to Dr Naidoo said the healthtech startup is looking to augment and multiply our roles. As founders we combined conclude clinical trials by mid year and thereafter signour skills in radiology, machine learning and business to up additional clients. create a AI radiology business that will democratise access “We hope to raise additional capital Q3 as we want to diagnostic healthcare in Africa,” she says. to scale our offering and distribution into the rest of Africa,” she added. 2000 x-rays in one minute Launched in January 2019, EnvisionIt Deep AI uses Innovation changing landscape, but slow AI to streamline and improve medical diagnoses for adoption, change in culture radiologists. She believes that with AI, the spread of knowledge and The medtech startup has developed an AI solution technology will intensify. called RADIFY which Dr Naidoo says can analyse 2000 Continued on page 34 x-rays in one minute.
