New Delhi: an IIT-Mandi start up has created a cost-effective AI-powered medical imaging solution that has the potential to revolutionize early detection of respiratory abnormalities, hepatobiliary diseases and genetic disorders in children, authorities said. The innovators at Dectrocel Healthcare have developed a platform where digital and analogue chest x-rays and photographs of children are uploaded and, within minutes, the algorithm it is capable of diagnosing respiratory abnormalities that have significant mortality, such as tuberculosis and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). Saumya Shukla, co-founder of Dectrocel Healthcare and Research Private Limited, said, “With AI (artificial intelligence) and ML (machine learning), especially in the context of healthcare, this age will see the birth of super intelligence, and with it, humans and machines will expand in the universe.
“Data is the new oil and the new currency, but now the systems that make sense from the data will be the new oil and the new currency.”
Shukla explained that India has a population of 1.4 billion and according to medical reports, one in five people suffer from a chronic disease.
Hepatobiliary diseasesespecially malignancies and respiratory conditions such as interstitial lung disease (ILD), COPD and lung cancer are a global health crisis and most existing diagnostic solutions focus heavily on advanced stage diseases, added.
“Most of these diseases do not have major symptoms at first, so it is imperative to diagnose them at the stage of preventive health care and allow for early treatment. To prevent this, Dectrocel Healthcare is working on creating affordable diagnostic tools that can help in early detection of such chronic diseases so that the patient has a good chance of being cured with promising health outcomes,” Shukla said.
The researchers claimed that the tools developed will enable early detection, provide access to specialized healthcare, reduce cases of misdiagnosis, and address inaffordability for the general public.
“Technology provides the ability to deliver specialist level healthcare to the most remote part of the world at an affordable price. At Dectrocel Healthcare, we chose our home state of Uttar Pradesh to create this impact at scale to start with and then replicate it nationally and globally,” added Shukla.
