In early February, Qritive announced a partnership with three diagnostic centres and hospitals in India: Metropolis Healthcare, Rajiv Gandhi Cancer Institute, and CŌRE Diagnostics. These institutions are set to use the Pantheon image management system (IMS) and Qritive’s Artificial Intelligence (AI) products.
According to a press statement, integrating Qritive’s AI technology into these institutions’ diagnostic processes represents a significant leap forward in modernising pathology practices. They are expected to enhance diagnostic accuracy, improve operational efficiency, and eventually, advance patient care.
“We have been operating in India since 2019 and signed our first major commercial contract there with a healthcare institution in 2021. In the early phase of the go-to-market, we relied primarily on direct engagement with pathologists, educating the market on the value of AI-powered solutions for diagnostics,” explains Qritive in an email to e27.
“Along the way, we also won several awards from NASSCOM and Sweden Innovation. Recently, considering the novelty of the technology in the healthcare system, we decided to run a programme providing an opportunity for pathologists to experience the benefits of AI in their workflow. Our ‘Experience Program’ was well received, creating the momentum needed to deploy in three major hospitals and lab chains.”
With their AI solutions, Qritive targets pathologists working in private or public laboratories and hospitals and pharmaceutical and biotech companies as their primary users.
“Our current focus has been primarily on Asia and the Middle East. We acquire clients through direct sales, strategic partnerships, and distributors,” the company says.
Also Read:How data can be used to empower mental healthcare in Asia
“For this purpose, we have forged strong partnerships with key ecosystem players. Among others, we partner with slide scanner manufacturers such as Motic, infrastructure providers such as Dell and NTT, and digital pathology image management system players such as Corista.”
Headquartered in Singapore, with operations in the US and India, Qritive is an AI solution developer that aims to advance digital pathology for cancer diagnosis and improve health outcomes with the assistance of AI-based solutions.
Run by 15 full-time employees across Singapore and India, the company has raised US$7.5 million in a Series A round announced in 2023.
Qritive co-founders first crossed paths at the startup incubator Entrepreneur First (EF), previously operating in Singapore. Dr Kaveh Taghipour, who holds a PhD in Deep Learning, was matched with Dr Aneesh Sathe, who specialises in mechano-biology. Both were PhD graduates from the National University of Singapore (NUS) and took the challenge to change cancer diagnostics with AI.
While exploring several areas in healthcare, including radiology, ophthalmology, and infectious diseases, the co-founders realised the “serious challenges” pathology faced.
“These problems include a severe global shortage of pathologists, manual and error prone processes in cancer diagnosis, and long turnaround times for patients. Having lost close family members to cancer, Kaveh and Aneesh decided to build AI-powered solutions for pathologists to enable effective and affordable treatment for cancer detection. This led to the establishment of Qritive in 2017,” the company says.
In addition to its partnerships in India, Qritive has also made several milestones, including being selected in the inaugural batch of JLABS Singapore, a collaboration between Johnson & Johnson Innovation and Singapore Economic Development Board; receiving conditional approval from the Abu Dhabi Department of Health for clinical deployment in UAE, and having an extended network to more than 300 pathologists, providing research and clinical studies to healthcare institutions.
Regarding its R&D, the company has released two prostate AI and lymph node metastasis modules.
“In our development pipeline, we have a few modules dedicated to breast cancer and ovarian cancer detection, and several other critical areas of healthcare,” the company says of its major plan in 2024.
“Our strategic focus entails the expansion into key markets, with a particular emphasis on Asia and the Middle East, where we can observe a strong commitment to adopt digital pathology to deal with the growing flow of cancer cases. In parallel, we pursue regulatory certifications in key geographies.”
—
Image Credit: Qritive
The post How Qritive aims to improve the diagnosis process in Asia and the Middle East with AI appeared first on e27.