Kenyan startup Neural Labs is using AI-enabled medical imaging to facilitate real-time diagnosis of various respiratory, heart and breast diseases and pathologies.
Founded in January 2021 by Tom Kinyanjui and Paul Mwaura Ndirangu, two machine learning engineers, Neural Labs has developed a platform called NeuralSight in a bid to reduce Africa’s disease burden and hospital workloads, with better patient outcomes and democratised access to healthcare.
NeuralSight can identify, label and highlight over 20 respiratory, heart and breast diseases and pathologies, including pneumonia, tuberculosis, COVID-19, emphysema, and more. The co-founders have been working on different AI-focused technologies since 2020, eventually zeroing in on tackling healthcare challenges.
“In 2020, we worked on various projects on platforms such as Zindi Africa and Kaggle that focused on improving healthcare delivery using AI. We identified the market gap in Africa and decided to collect data locally and develop AI models in the healthcare space to improve patient care,” Kinyanjui told Disrupt Africa.
In Africa, healthcare services are overused yet under-resourced, meaning a patient’s wait time to receive analysed lab results is often more than 72 hours. This results in late treatment, reducing the chances of survival. NeuralSight’s AI-enabled medical imaging platform speeds u[ this process, and the startup is currently running clinical trials in Nairobi.
“We are receiving positive feedback, and receiving numerous requests from hospitals to implement our technology in their facilities,” said Kinyanjui.
Neural Labs has just joined the latest Startupbootcamp AfriTech programme, which is based out of Dakar, and Kinyanjui said taking part in the accelerator will allow it to conduct trials and collect data in West African countries.
“Currently, NeuralSight is not making revenue as we are in the process of final product development,” he said. “However, revenue streams are expected to be both transactional and on a subscription basis.”
