A Rwandan startup called DoctorAI is utilizing artificial intelligence (AI) to help healthcare providers reduce medical errors and increase accessibility to medical specialists, potentially reducing mortality and morbidity rates. The company was founded in 2019 by medical doctors Kevin Muragijimana and David Ndayishimiye to address healthcare challenges across Africa. This region has an average of 0.2 physicians per 1,000 people, compared to Italy's eight doctors per 1,000 people.
Even in countries like Rwanda, where GPs are relatively common, radiologists are limited to less than 20 in a country of 13 million people, and where doctors are present, they can still make mistakes. "I think it's time to accept that errors will happen. Doctors are humans, and the systems they work in are not infallible. As a society, we must decide whether we wish to punish and blame those who dedicate their lives to helping others or to ensure that we create an open and supportive environment where both patients and doctors feel safe," said Muragijimana.
DoctorAI provides user-friendly and mobile-based AI models to help reduce diagnostic errors and promote standard management. The startup offers an AI-powered breast X-ray, which interprets breast images with an accuracy of 98%, and an AI-powered chest X-ray analyzer, which can detect normal and many abnormal features on chest X-ray images, including lung cancer, with an accuracy of 95.4%.
"Our mission is to use disruptive technology to satisfy people's everyday health concerns through evidence-based and research-based medical care and optimize the standard of healthcare delivery," said Muragijimana. "Our vision is that patients use DoctorAI to express their health concerns, physicians improve the well-being of the community, pharmacists do more than dispensing medications, and researchers impact the world."
DoctorAI has enrolled over 100 doctors in its beta phase, has received grant funding, has undergone incubation, and is now starting to attract paying users. The startup plans to go global, offering other services such as online consultations with specialist doctors and licensed pharmacists. "We have made our distribution channels so smooth in a way that our software programs within the DoctorAI app are available to everyone with a smartphone, anywhere in the world," said Muragijimana.
Play audio
No comments