The Medical AI for African Nations (MAfoAN) Initiative
“Mah-fo-anh” Iniative
BrainScanology and InnovaRx Global Health have partnered to build race- and sex-specific medical artificial intelligence (AI) for Africa. Our diagnostic software works with images from a smartphone camera. Thus, they are easily deployable and cost-effective.
“Data Bias” is a major problem in medical AI and Machine Learning (ML), so if we want AI models to work accurately on Africans, we need to train it with medical images from Africans. Otherwise, data bias causes misdiagnosis and under-diagnosis that unfairly increases suffering and death. What we learn from these models can be translated to African Americans in the USA.
We will archive a subset of our data for public access so that researchers from around the world can train their AI and ML models on African medical images.
Countries that will soon join our research studies:
Nigeria, Democratic Republic of Congo
Hey, Health Tech Companies! Want to join our movement and provide free services to African medical clinics? Contact us.
The Problem
Gambia and other African countries lack physicians, radiologists, ophthalmologists, and optometrists. Without rapid, objective artificial intelligence (A.I.) tools based on smartphone cameras, people unnecessarily suffer from chronic diseases that can be treated if detected. In many diseases, early detection has been shown to lead to better outcomes as treatment can be started early which prevents damage and limits disease progression. Many countries in Africa could benefit from simple AI-containing technology to better screen the population for common diseases for which cost-effective treatment is available.
The Solution
BrainScanology (BSI) is partnering with InnovaRx Global Health (IGH) to develop A.I. technology to diagnose diseases through pictures from a smartphone. BSI patented a software, ShapeGenie, that measures shapes without measuring area and volume, which was impossible until now. IGH is a pharmacy and medical clinic in the Gambia and will provide health data from patients, along with images of the inside of eyes and images of hands. The goal is for BSI to develop machine learning models that do the following:
- Diagnose diabetic retinopathy, a sight-threatening condition detectable through images of the inside of an eye, taken with a fundus camera attached to a smartphone camera.
- Diagnose rheumatoid arthritis of the fingers through pictures of hands taken from a smartphone camera.
- Differentiate osteoarthritis from rheumatoid arthritis of the fingers through pictures of hands taken from a smartphone camera.
Below are example cases of what ShapeGenie can do that even Deep Learning – the current best A.I. tool for image classification – cannot do. Deep Learning requires the user to define “ground truth” (meaning what is healthy and what is diseased), but ShapeGenie helps the user define new ground truth (meaning we can find subtypes of diseases that we didn’t know existed). ShapeGenie and Deep Learning can be combined for the best of both worlds!
The Need
We are seeking to raise philanthropic contributions to fund a 12-month project for Gambia. The project will determine how effectively the technology can be used identify diabetic retinopathy and differentiate rheumatoid arthritis – a treatable inflammatory condition – from osteoarthritis, a common age-related trait which currently does not have treatment. The resulting product, once demonstrated to be effective in the Gambia, will be transferable to other African countries.
Below Are Examples of What ShapeGenie Can Measure
Video [11 min]: LCPC Transform Measures Finger & Knuckle Shapes for Rheumatoid Arthritis
Video [13 min]: LCPC Transform on Hand Drawing and Handwriting Tests
Video [11 min]: LCPC Transform Measures Vertebral Modic Shapes in Ways that Area and Volume Cannot
The Team Leads
Dr. David H. Nguyen, PhD
CEO of BrainScanology.
Inventor of ShapeGenie.
www.BrainScanology.com
Dr. Ismail Badjie, PharmD
Pharmacist.
CEO of InnovaRx Global Health.
www.InnovaRxGlobal.com
Dr. Frances Williams, PhD
Clinician, Professor of Genetic Epidemiology.
King’s College London.
https://kclpure.kcl.ac.uk/portal/frances.williams.html
Dr. Jorge Cuadros, OD, PhD
Optometrist, Computational Scientist.
Director of Clinical Informatics Research at University of California, Berkeley.
CEO of EyePACS.
https://optometry.berkeley.edu/people/jorge-cuadros-od-phd
Dr. Igor Immerman, MD
Hand Surgeon, Associate Professor of Orthopedic Surgery.
University of California, San Francisco.
https://orthosurgery.ucsf.edu/patient-care/faculty/igor-immerman
Harini Kumar, MBA
COO/Co-Founder of BrainScanology.
www.BrainScanology.com
Haddy Jallow-Coulibaly, MBA
Co-Founder of InnovaRx Global Health.
www.InnovaRxGlobal.com
MAfoAN News 