Building a Global AI Venture for Medical Imaging Analysis from India: Prashant Warier, CEO of Qure.ai (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: How did you find this customer?

Prashant Warier: TB is not one of those things that you can identify on an X-ray. If there is TB, it is likely that the X-ray will show some abnormality, but not every abnormality is likely to be TB. It could be other kinds of disease. Even COVID might look somewhat similar. It’s not precise. The patient comes in and takes an X-ray. If the X-ray is positive, you can do a microbiological test. That is a confirmation.

That algorithm works really well. That microbiological test is slow. You cannot do so many tests in an hour. It’s also expensive. X-ray is like a dollar and a test is like $20 per person. We realized that TB is very interesting. We do other findings as well, but TB is relevant because there is such a large volume of patients that can benefit.

We identified the right partners who were working on TB. There is an organization called Stop TB Partnership, which is a UN-funded organization. Their mandate is to eradicate TB. They work with WHO.

Sramana Mitra: Gates Foundation also probably.

Prashant Warier: Yes. They work with multiple partners to eradicate TB. We started working with them. They had a lot of data. We started working with another organization called Find. Find finds new diagnostics for TB and many such conditions. We started working with other universities that also do a lot of work with TB.

We created a lot of evidence that showed our technology can work better than a human reader in detecting TB. With that, we went into this TB program and offered our product. Initially, they said, “Don’t replace the radiologist.” We said we are only helping you do the microbiological test right away. If the algorithm says yes, we do that microbiological test. That was the initial idea.

We started doing this over and over again in so many places. With the blessings of Stop TB and others, they went to WHO and said that these technologies are so good. They are cheaper and more accurate. If you take X-rays from a hundred people, a human might find 20 of them who would require a microbiological test. The algorithm might see 10. Your cost of doing a test is $20, you are spending $400 versus only $200. We reduced that cost by being more accurate.

With all this data, they went to WHO and said that you should put in the guidelines that AI can be used in the absence of a human reader. To date, this is the only place in radiology where we are allowed to autonomously interpret the scan.

Sramana Mitra: Are you the only company doing this?

Prashant Warier: A couple of other companies are also doing this.

Sramana Mitra: How many customers do you have in this use case?

Prashant Warier: Quite a few. We are in 1,600 hospitals worldwide in about 80 countries. TB is in about 35 countries. Maybe 600 to 700 hospitals are using the solution.

Sramana Mitra: In 2018 when you validated the use case, up to that point, it’s more than two years of work. Did Fractal fund that whole work?

Prashant Warier: Yes, till we raised a funding round with Sequoia in 2020 for $16 million.

This segment is part 4 in the series : Building a Global AI Venture for Medical Imaging Analysis from India: Prashant Warier, CEO of Qure.ai
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