HYDERABAD, India & KIBBUTZ SHEFAYIM, Israel--(BUSINESS WIRE)--HealthNet Global (HNG), a part of the Apollo Hospitals Group, India and Zebra Medical Vision, one of the global leaders in AI Imaging software, Israel announced today a new collaboration that will focus on validating and deploying AI based tools at scale across India. The companies shall jointly receive support from India-Israel Industrial R&D and Technological Innovation Fund (I4F) for their $4.9 Million project to co-develop and to provide clinical validation, and evidence of the efficacy of radiology Al based tools in India as per I4F norms.
The final developed project will be able to assist as a primary screening method for major diseases in large scale screenings. For example, World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that 3.6 million people with TB are missed by health systems every year and do not receive adequate care. This is primarily because patients with TB may present with mild or no symptoms, particularly early on. Many affected people arrive at clinics too late with advanced disease or multi-drug resistant TB (MDR-TB), which is difficult to treat and more likely to cause death. One of the key strategies to tackling TB is early diagnosis. Unfortunately, sputum testing is only 50% accurate and frequently misses the disease in its early stages. Both companies will focus on development of AI-based Chest X-ray interpretation tool for TB which can help address the gap.
Speaking of the initiative, Sangita Reddy, Joint Managing Director, Apollo Hospitals said, “When it comes to health, the promise of AI to provide access and improve outcomes in very intriguing. There is a critical need to provide good healthcare access in remote and rural communities, and we believe this initiative will allow us the opportunity to make significant advances in this area. Apollo’s clinical and scientific depth and Zebra-Med’s expertise in AI complement each other perfectly. This project is part of our continuing endeavor to design new tools to improve healthcare access and deliver best outcomes to patients at lower cost.”
In addition to leveraging clinical depth and breadth of the Apollo Hospitals network, HNG will work in close collaboration with Apollo Radiology International, a distinguished part of Apollo Hospitals, to bring in leadership, experience and technology in Radiology reporting to the project. The partnership will capitalize on the advancements already achieved by Zebra-Med in developing dozens of AI tools. The arsenal of algorithms will include deep learning algorithms for the detection of acute conditions such as brain bleeds in head CTs and Pneumothorax in chest X-ray, detection of breast cancer in mammograms, Osteoporosis in CT scans and 40 other conditions.
