Man and Superman: India’s Prospects in the Age of AI (Part 2)

Now, I stand before you in 2023. The world has evolved. AI has quickened pace. There is both good news and bad news in that quickening of technological advancement. Let us start with the good news.

India has leapfrogged to an extremely positive strategic position. Some of this is due to the movements in geopolitics. American hegemony has ended. China has emerged as a parallel power with imperialistic ambitions. The West wants India on its side to counterbalance China.

A lot of India’s prospects, however, are due to its technological capability. And Artificial Intelligence sits at the heart of that know-how.

World class technology companies with AI expertise are now emerging out of India and selling products and services on a global scale. 

One such, Qure.ai, offers a product that can analyze chest x-rays at lightning speed and screen for TB for example. 

I spoke with the CEO Prashant Warier recently. He told me, and I quote:

“Chest X-ray is the most common imaging modality. There are about 1.3 billion chest X-rays taken every year around the world. If you look at India for example, most X-rays are not reported by radiologists. There is such a high volume and radiologists are busy with their CT scans, MRIs, and ultrasounds.

Similarly, if you look at most geographies, X-rays are not reported well or not reported at all. Error rate is anywhere between 20% and 23%. It’s a very basic modality. X-rays came in the 1800s. It’s old. It’s cheap. X-ray is still valuable, but with the increasing volume, radiologists don’t have the time to interpret that.

This is a perfect use case for AI. How do we automate X-ray reporting? The hypothesis was to make X-ray reporting similar to pathology reporting. Pathology reporting used to be done manually in the 80s. You used to count the number of white blood cells, red blood cells, and platelets using a microscope. It became fully automated in the 2000s when machines came in.

Qure.ai wanted to get X-ray reporting to the point where you can rely on a machine to give you the report. Technology is close to that.

They found their first customer in the Philippines.

This customer was running TB screening. They had four mobile vans. These vans have an X-ray system inside the van. They would start from Manila and travel around the country for about two weeks. Then they come back to Manila. Everyday they screen about 200 to 300 people. Let’s say 1400 in a week. They had many X-rays. There is no radiologist in the van. They collect the X-rays at the end of two weeks and then send them out for interpretation.

Back in 2018, it took them four to five weeks to get that X-ray read. A patient who came in on day one would get the result four weeks later. That patient is already gone or has started treatment. 

Qure.ai technology could get the report in one minute. 

Now, 600-700 hospitals around the world are using this product.

This segment is part 2 in the series : Man and Superman: India's Prospects in the Age of AI
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