Grace Ashiru
Envisionit Deep AI, a South African health tech startup that uses artificial intelligence (AI) to improve diagnostic imaging accessibility and quality, has received $1.65 million in funding from New GX Ventures SA.
Dr. Jaishree Naidoo, Terence Naidu, and Andrei Migatchev started Envisionit Deep AI in 2019. The South African Health Products Regulatory Association has approved Radify AI, one of its products. Ratify AI is a platform that makes medical imaging diagnosis fast and accurate.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, Envisionit Deep AI released a product that could find COVID pneumonia in less than 25 milliseconds by looking at chest X-rays. The company also brought its solutions to the mining industry in South Africa, where workers are more likely to get tuberculosis.
Its platform was also used to improve efficiency at a 700-bed hospital with only one radiologist in South Africa’s Northern Cape province. It was also used in several ICUs to sort patients during the second peak of the pandemic.
There aren’t enough people in radiology to do the job, so the ratio of radiologists to people is 1:389,255 in Kenya and 1:566,000 in Nigeria.
The money will help the company grow outside of South Africa and get approval from the Food and Drug Administration in the US and the European Medical Agency. The company is also putting out a way for doctors to learn with the help of computers.
The ultimate goal of Envisionit Deep AI is to make diagnostic imaging more accessible to everyone and to lighten the load on the healthcare system, especially in Africa, where investments in infrastructure and human resources remain low.
