Govt Launches New AI-driven Platform 'XraySetu' on WhatsApp for Rapid Screening of COVID-19

A new AI-driven platform will now help early intervention through rapid screening of COVID 19 with the help of Chest X-ray interpretation over WhatsApp for doctors who have access to X-ray machines. The solution called XraySetu can work with low-resolution images sent via mobiles, is quick and easy to use, and can facilitate detection in rural areas.

As COVID 19 continues to wreak havoc across the rural heartlands of India, it has become critical to drive rapid testing, contact tracing, and create dedicated containment zones. At a time when such tests are taking more than a week across some cities, the challenge is even more for rural areas. Easy alternative tests are necessary as RT-PCR tests also give a ‘false negative’ for some variants.

ARTPARK (AI & Robotics Technology Park), a not-for-profit foundation established by the Indian Institute of Science (IISc), Bengaluru, with support from the Department of Science & Technology (DST), Govt. of India, in collaboration with Bangalore based HealthTech startup Niramai and the Indian Institute of Science (IISc), has developed XraySetu specifically designed to identify COVID positive patients even from low-resolution Chest X-Ray images sent over Whatsapp.

It also has semantic annotations of affected areas for review and localized heatmap by doctors to help them verify it easily with other modalities and has already served close to 1200+ reports so far from the interior parts of India.

To conduct the health check, any doctor simply needs to visit www.xraysetu.com and click on the ‘Try the Free XraySetu Beta’ button. The platform will then redirect the person to another page, wherein he or she can choose to engage with the WhatsApp-based chatbot via web or smartphone application. Or the doctor can simply send a WhatsApp message to the phone number +91 8046163838 to start the XraySetu service. Then they just need to click the picture of the patient’s X-ray and obtain the 2-page automated diagnostics with annotated images in a few minutes. While extending the probability of the COVID-19 contraction, the report also highlights a localized heatmap for a quick perusal of the doctor.

Tested and validated with over 1,25 000 X-ray images from National Institute of Health, UK, as well as over 1000+ Indian COVID patients from, XraySetu, has shown excellent performance with Sensitivity: 98.86%, and Specificity: 74.74%

Mr. Umakant Soni, Founder, and CEO, ARTPARK, said, “We need to scale technology for addressing the needs of 1.36 billion people, especially considering we have 1 radiologist for over 1 million people here. Built with the collaboration of industry and academia, XraySetu paves the way for exponential technologies like AI to leapfrog and provide cutting-edge healthcare technology to rural India in an extremely cost-effective manner.

“NIRAMAI has partnered with ARTPARK and IISc to provide a rapid COVID screening method for rural doctors who have access to X-ray machines. XraySetu provides an automated interpretation of Chest X-Rays to predict if a patient has any lung abnormality that indicates COVID-19 infection,” said Dr. Geetha Manjunath, Founder, and CEO, Niramai.

“In the absence of COVID positive X-Ray images, we developed a unique Transfer Learning framework that leverages easily available X-ray images of lungs, not necessarily COVID positive, to learn useful features which have high predictive power. We also developed a confidence score which is guided by the areas of lungs that are infected. The system outputs a prediction, localizes the infected parts, and creates a report which gives a confidence score, all within a few minutes”, said Prof. Chiranjib Bhattacharyya, IISc.

Besides COVID-19, the platform can also detect 14 additional lung-related ailments, including tuberculosis and pneumonia, alongside others. It can further be used for both analog and digital X-rays and has been successfully piloted by more than 300 doctors in rural areas over the last 10 months.

Technologies like XraySetu can enable cutting-edge AI-driven systems powering mobile PHCs, which can make healthcare more accessible even across rural India at a fraction of the cost.

Dr. Padmanabh Kamath, Prof & HOD Cardiology, KMC, Mangalore, who has been an early advisor and user of XraySetu, stressed that technologies like these could take healthcare and technology to the underprivileged and rural areas. Another early user of the service, Dr. Anil Kumar A D, Medical Officer of Health, Shimoga in Karnataka, was happy that the technology is helping to get the quick diagnosis of patients.

“Several Hubs of Cyber-physical Systems established by DST are working on leveraging of Artificial Intelligence, Virtual Reality, Data Analytics, Robotics, Sensors and other tools to address the challenges of the health sector from diagnostics, and drug design to biomedical devices to telemedicine,” said Prof Ashutosh Sharma, Secretary, DST.

ARTPARK, initiated under the National Mission on Interdisciplinary Cyber-Physical Systems (NM-ICPS), is further collaborating with infrastructure partners like C-DAC (for leveraging AI supercomputer ParamSiddi), Nvidia& AWS to scale this free service to all the doctors in rural India.

For further details, Mr. Umakant Soni, Founder, and CEO, ARTPARK, can be contacted at umakant@artpark.in.

NIRAMAI Health Analytix Receives CE Mark Approval - Set To Go Global

Bengaluru, 06, April 2021: Niramai, the deep-tech healthcare company offering an innovative AI-based, radiation-free breast cancer screening test has now received the prestigious CE Mark Approval, ISO 13485 and MDSAP (Medical Device Single Audit Program) International Certifications. The CE mark Approval indicates that the product may be sold freely in any part of the European Economic Area. The ISO 13485 and MDSAP certifications endorse medical device manufacturers for their compliance with the international medical device quality standards and regulatory requirements.

NIRAMAI's Thermalytix™ Solution and quality management processes were audited by an international notified body consisting of expert auditors from India, Germany and Australia. This CE mark approval shows that the product meets EU requirements for medical devices under MDD93/42/EEC for safety, and performance. With these quality certifications, NIRAMAI's Thermalytix solution can now be applied to all countries of Europe, as well as applicable to many Asian, African and Middle East countries.

NIRAMAI Thermalytix™ test is revolutionizing breast health screening by enabling privacy-aware, safe and accurate breast health checks in hospitals, in screening camps and also at homes. NIRAMAI Test is already being used in renowned hospitals and clinics across various Indian cities, including HCG Hospital, Apollo Clinics, HealthSpring Diagnostics, among others. NIRAMAI Thermalytix™ solution uses a high-resolution thermal sensing device to capture thermal images and a cloud-hosted analytics solution for analysing these thermal images using proprietary machine learning-based software for reliable, early and accurate breast cancer screening. The test has been clinically validated to show better sensitivity than mammography and the validation results have been published in reputed international venues like the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) and San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium (SABCS). NIRAMAI has also received several prestigious awards, including the National Startup Award for 2020 in Healthcare Diagnostic category.

Dr. Geetha Manjunath, Founder and CEO of NIRAMAI comments, "We are delighted to receive the CE marking, ISO and MDSAP certifications for our technology, further strengthening our resolve to detect breast cancer in early stages and save lives. These certifications enable us to expand our operations internationally and meet the strong global demand we are seeing for our novel solution. Moving forward, we plan to collaborate with renowned radiologists of the National Health Service (NHS) and other key opinion leaders for an initial market testing in Europe, Africa and Asia. In addition, we are in the process of partnering with more Indian Healthcare providers for pan India adoption."

Investors of NIRAMAI are also excited about this news. Manish Singhal, Founding Partner of pi Ventures and lead investor of NIRAMAI said, Niramai's unique approach of detection of breast cancer using AI and thermal is a game-changer on how lives can be saved from breast cancer. With the ISO and CE certification, now Thermalytix can be made available to women beyond India especially in entire Europe, Middle East and several countries in Southeast Asia leading to global impact. We are super excited to take this technology to the world.

Another NIRAMAI board member and investor from the Japanese VC Firm, Dream Incubator, Munehiko Eto, said "There is a strong global need for Niramai's breakthrough technology innovation of AI-based screening solution for breast cancer, especially for women with dense breasts. NIRAMAI has continued to achieve success even in the challenging year of COVID-19. We are proud to have partnered with them".


About NIRAMAI:

NIRAMAI is a deep-tech startup offering a radiation-free, non-invasive, non-touch, breast cancer screening solution for hospitals and diagnostic centres. The solution is accurate, affordable, privacy-aware, and can be used for women of all ages. NIRAMAI solution has been awarded 10 granted US patents, 3 Indian patents, 2 Chinese and Singapore patents. Niramai has won many recognitions, including the Gold prize in Hack Osaka 2019, Aegis Grahambell Award, Frost and Sullivan Award, selection to Google Launchpad, Philips Healthworks, Nvidia Inception, BIRAC WinER, Elevate 100, project support from Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the CDC-United Kingdom. NIRAMAI is the only Indian company listed on the 2019 Top AI 100 startups in the world announced by CB Insights. NIRAMAI was also the winner of the National Startup Award 2020 in the Healthcare Diagnostics Category. NIRAMAI has raised a total of 7 Million USD from investors such as piVentures, Dream Incubator, Axilor Ventures, Ankur Capital, BeeNext and others.


Website: http://niramai.com/

Health-Tech Firm NIRAMAI Announces Partnership with Healthspring

NIRAMAI Team

Mumbai, December 28, 2020: Healthspring, a pioneer of primary healthcare in India partners with NIRAMAI Health Analytix, India's leading deep-tech healthcare company to offer their screening solution Thermalytix for early detection of breast cancer. With the aim to increase awareness on the subject, this association will enable women to understand the importance of timely examination. This screening will be available at Healthspring clinics in Mumbai and Pune for individuals and corporates. 

Healthspring is a personalized healthcare services venture based in Mumbai, India. The company operates a chain of primary healthcare clinics in India. According to WHO, one in 22 women is at the risk of developing a breast abnormality in her lifetime. It is a well-established fact that early diagnosis is critical in saving the life of a cancer patient. The collaboration with Healthspring will involve a promotion that has special offers on in-clinic screenings and community screenings in residential localities. The campaign will be conducted in Mumbai first.

Niramai's proprietary solution 'Thermalytix' uses a high-resolution thermal sensing device and a cloud-hosted analytics solution for analyzing thermal images using artificial intelligence and machine learning for reliable, early and accurate breast cancer screening. Recently Niramai launched a solution for Screening Covid symptoms using similar thermal-based technology. Niramai is addressing such critical healthcare problems through automated AI-led solutions. This screening tool that can be operated by a simple clinician has led to 10 US granted patents and won several prestigious awards.

Commenting on the collaboration, Dr Gautam Sen, Chairman and Founder of Healthspring, said, "Cancer amongst women over 40 years of age is a common phenomenon. It is our honour to collaborate with NIRAMAI Solutions to raise awareness on the matter. NIRAMAI is effortlessly working towards helping women take appropriate measures to ensure their wellbeing. Through this association, we at Healthspring look forward to encouraging as many patients as possible to undertake timely examinations and suitable medical attention."

Dr. Geetha Manjunath, Founder & CEO, Niramai said, "Breast cancer is a condition that affects far too many women across the globe. Our goal is to educate and spread awareness amongst women about our pain-less, non-touch, radiation-free clinically approved screening services. We're looking forward to working with Healthspring to benefit patients in urban and semi-urban areas."

About NIRAMAI: https://www.niramai.com/

Niramai Health Analytix is a deep-tech company with expertise in thermal imaging and AI. Niramai has developed an innovative AI Engine called Thermalytix™ which enables a radiation-free, non-invasive, non-touch, breast cancer screening solution for hospitals and diagnostic centers. NIRAMAI has recently also developed a new solution called FeverTest for Automated COVID Screening leveraging its expertise in thermal imaging and AI.

The innovative machine learning techniques used in Niramai's solution have led to 10 granted patents in the US. Niramai has won many awards including the National Startup Award 2020, Gold prize in Hack Osaka 2019, Aegis Graham Bell Award, Elevate 100, Frost and Sullivan Award and has been part of accelerators such as Google Launchpad, Philips Healthworks, Nvidia Inception, BIRAC Winner and others. Niramai is the only Indian company listed on the 2019 Top AI 100 startups in the world announced by CB Insights. NIRAMAI recently announced a partnership with Apollo Clinics to take Niramai solution pan-India.

About Healthspring: https://www.healthspring.in/

Incorporated in 2010, Healthspring operates a network of primary care clinics. With an aim to create awareness about the importance of Preventive Healthcare, Healthspring offers services such as doctor consultations, physiotherapy, diet consultations, diagnostic services, pharmacy, 24x7 on-call support and unique doctor led 24x7 medical emergency response all under one roof. Driven by a core team of believers, Healthspring today is 8,00,000 customers strong. Healthspring has 25 clinics and is growing rapidly; it has serviced over 200 corporates and is operational across cities through their extended network. The goal is to be dependable for the patient in his/her hour of need and to deliver service with the highest ethics

AI based Healthtech Startup NIRAMAI Raises $6 Mn from Dream Incubator, Others

Artificial intelligence (AI) based healthtech startup NIRAMAI Health Analytix, has announced that it has closed $6 mn in a Series A round of funding led by Dream Incubator, a Japanese VC firm, with participation from BEENEXT and other investors.

Earlier investors pi Ventures, Ankur Capital, Axilor Ventures, and Binny Bansal also participated in the round. The funds will be used for scaling in India, hiring top talent and getting additional regulatory approvals for international expansion.

The fresh funding comes within three months after NIRAMAI had raised about US$6-7 million from its existing investors Pi Ventures, Axilor, Ankur Capital and Flipkart co-founder Binny Bansal, in November last year.

NIRAMAI is creating a revolution in breast
health screening with its patented technology called Thermalytix™ which is a
non-contact, non-invasive and radiation-free solution for early stage breast
cancer detection. The solution is clinically proven to be accurate for women of
all age groups. This affordable and portable solution is completely privacy
conscious. Thermalytix can be applied to other areas of diagnostics as well.
This innovation has led to NIRAMAI being selected as the only Indian company
listed on 2019 cohort of AI 100 startups in the world by global business data
intelligence platform CB Insights.

Dr. Geetha Manjunath, CEO & CTO of NIRAMAI, says, “NIRAMAI helps to bridge the gap in
our healthcare delivery systems by providing an AI tool that is
accurate, affordable and accessible to all. If institutionalised as regular
screening method, NIRAMAI Thermalytix has the potential to save many lives not
just from breast cancer deaths but eventually other diseases as well. We are
thankful to the continued support and mentorship provided by our seed investors
and are excited to join hands with our new investors to propel us to next level
of growth.”

Eto Munehiko, Managing
Director, Dream Incubator Advisory and Investment India, who will join
Niramai board, says,
“We are excited about partnering with Niramai that is building a truly deep-tech
solution out of India. We also believe in the potential of their technology to
solve global health problems at scale. The disruptive AI based technology is
key to early detection of disease and saving lives especially where there is a
shortage of skilled medical professionals and dense breast ratio is high. Dream Incubator would support Niramai’s
international expansion including Japan.” Dream Incubator has invested
in more than 160 companies across 8 countries and supported 28 IPOs.

Manish Singhal, Founding Partner, pi
Ventures added, “We believe that Niramai’s team and technology will create
a significant difference in early detection of breast cancer and are happy to
continue backing them in their journey. AI diagnostic tools are helping doctors
scour through data to better diagnose a variety of abnormal conditions and is
the only way to bridge the huge demand and supply gap when it comes to quality
healthcare.”

NIRAMAI
has made excellent progress in 2018 showing clinical validation with multiple
trials published in international forums, market validation with 20+
installations in hospitals and diagnostic centres across 9 cities in India and
receiving excellent user feedback from women.  

NIRAMAI was founded in July 2016 by serial
intrapreneur Dr. Geetha Manjunath who comes with 25 years of expertise in research
and innovation leadership, and Nidhi Mathur with rich experience in business
planning, strategy and product management. Both women co-founders have
previously worked with companies like Xerox Research and Hewlett Packard Labs. Niramai has previously raised a seed round of $1mn in April
2017.

Health Tech Startup Niramai Raises $7 Mn from Pi Ventures, Axilor, Binny Bansal & Others

Bangalore-based NIRAMAI Health Analytix, a deep tech powered health technology startup, has raised about US$6-7 million (~ ₹50 crore) in a fresh round of funding from its existing investors Pi Ventures, Axilor, Ankur Capital and Flipkart co-founder Binny Bansal, reported Economic Times.

The startup, which was part of AXilors summer'17 accelerator batch, had last raised $50,000 in November of last year when it was selected by Google for its Launchpad accelerator programme, a Google's flagship 6-month programme that includes an intensive two-week boot camp in San Francisco. Prior to this, the startup had raised an undisclosed amount in seed funding from Pi Ventures, Binny Bansal, Axilor Ventures, Ankur Capital, and 500 Startups, in in April 2017.

The startup has raised a total of $6.1M in funding over 3 rounds including this one. NIRAMAI has reportedly saw revenues of Rs 43 lakh in FY17-18.

Founded in 2016 by Geetha Manjunath and Nidhi Mathur, NIRAMAI has developed a novel breast cancer screening solution that uses a new cancer screening software powered by machine intelligence called 'Thermalytix' over traditional thermography images, which can detect cancer at a much earlier stage than traditional diagnostic methods and can therefore improve survival rates.

NIRAMAI's portable technology, which is low cost and affordable for mass screening of rural population, has screened more than 3,000 women and had earlier shared plans of looking to expand across the country through healthcare partners, as well as in a couple of Asian markets by 2019. The company at present has deployments in diagnostic centres/hospitals across three states -- Karnataka, Tamil Nadu and Telangana.

In India, NIRAMAI competes with Healthi, Qure.AI, and Predible Health, which too have envisaged AI for their solution. Globally, the company competes with Volpara Solutions, Enlitic, Inc., and SemanticMD.

pi Ventures, India’s first applied AI and IoT focused early stage venture fund, has recently got US$6 million from CDC Group plc, a UK Government's development finance institution. It was founded by Manish Singhal (Co-founder & Ex-CEO, LetsVenture and prominent angel investor) and Umakant Soni (Ex Director India, Science Inc & Co-founder AI BOT company).

Meet 4 Indian Startups Selected for Google Launchpad Accelerator Programme in San Francisco

Google today announced the four shortlisted Indian startups for its hands-on mentorship programme 'Launchpad Accelerator'. With this batch, a total of 30 Indian startups have so far joined the Google's Launchpad programme since its launch.

Launchpad Accelerator is Google's six-month programme that includes an intensive two-week boot camp in San Francisco and mentoring from over 30 teams across Google and expert mentors from top technology companies in Silicon Valley and globally.

The four shortlisted Indian startups will join a group of startups shortlisted from all over the world at the Google Developers' Launchpad Space in San Francisco in the US.

The four shortlisted Indian startups are:

BabyChakra is a Mumbai based startup which is essentially an online marketplace for maternity and childcare products. It claims to be a trusted care companion to Indian parents, from pregnancy to parenting.

m.Paani is also Mumbai based startup which is founded in 2013 by Akanksha Hazari and backed by IDG Ventures. It powers real-time, direct to consumer engagement, marketing, loyalty and insights for mass market consumers and retailers.

NIRAMAI is a Bengaluru based healthtech startup which was founded in 2016 by Geetha Manjunath and Nidhi Mathur. The startup has developed a novel software to detect breast cancer at a much earlier stage than traditional methods or self-examination.

SocialCops is a Delhi based startup founded in 2013 by Prukalpa Sankar and Varun Banka. It is essentially a data intelligence company that empowers organizations to make better decisions through data. Their platform aims to bring the entire decision-making process to one place — collecting primary data, accessing secondary data, layering internal data, transforming and merging all the data, and visualizing relevant insights through dashboards.

"These startups have been shortlisted based on their unique value proposition and use of latest technologies like machine learning and artificial intelligence," Roy Glasberg, Global Lead, Google Developers Launchpad, said in a statement.

Class 5 of the mentorship will kick off on January 29 and will include two weeks of all-expenses paid training, as part of the the full six-month programme.

Revolutionary Breast Cancer Screening Startup NIRAMAI Raises Funding Led by Pi Ventures

NIRAMAI Health Analytix, a startup that’s building a revolutionary non-invasive, non-touch, non-radiation approach to detect breast cancer has raised seed funding led by pi Ventures with participation from Ankur Capital, Axilor Ventures, 500 Startups and Flipkart co-founder Binny Bansal. NIRAMAI (Non Invasive Risk Assessment with Machine Learning) is a pioneer of a new patented technology called Thermalytix© that can remove technological, logistical, and cultural barriers that hinder breast cancer screening among women today. The start-up’s solution uses artificial intelligence over thermal images to address the issues of early detection of breast cancer.

NIRAMAI has recently been inducted by Axilor Ventures for its summer 2017 accelerator batch.

NIRAMAI is on a mission to create a universal cancer screening method that can save lives by detecting breast cancer at an early stage. The overall hardware-software solution is portable and uses big data analytics, artificial intelligence and machine learning for reliable, early and accurate breast cancer screening. Early diagnosis is critical in saving the life of a cancer patient. Their method of screening is based on principles of Thermography that can detect tumors 5 years before mammography or a clinical exam can detect.

NIRAMAI was founded in July 2016 by Dr. Geetha Manjunath who comes with 25 years of research and innovation expertise in areas such as data analytics, machine learning, cloud computing, semantic web and Nidhi Mathur who is a serial intrapreneur with rich experience in business planning, strategy and product management. Both the women cofounders have previously worked with companies like Xerox Research Center and Hewlett Packard Labs.

[caption id="attachment_116078" align="aligncenter" width="700"] NIRAMAI Team[/caption]

Dr. Geetha Manjunath, CEO & Co-founder of NIRAMAI, says, “Mortality rates among breast cancer patients are very high in India. Our solution is portable, low-cost, very safe, privacy-sensitive and can detect cancer at a very early stage making it very suitable for regular preventive health checkup as well as screening camps. This investment will help us strengthen our IP portfolio, expand operations and ensure our cancer screening tool is readily available for commercial use.”

Manish Singhal, Founding Partner, pi Ventures added, “Breast Cancer is a major killer across the world. In India, one out of two women die after getting diagnosed with breast cancer since the detection happens very late. Early detection is key to saving lives and is enabled very well with the innovative and disruptive AI based solution from NIRAMAI. We are excited to partner with them in their journey to solve this important and worldwide problem.”

Co-founder of the Mumbai-based impact investor Ankur Capital, Dr. Ritu Verma said “We are very excited to partner with NIRAMAI. Their early detection solution is low cost, zero radiation and non contact, which very effectively addresses the concerns and limitations for larger adoption of screening for women across all segments. Breast cancer rates are growing in India and having such a solution is imperative for addressing the dismal survival rates we are seeing today.”

Shalini Prakash from 500 Startups, the leading global venture capital seed fund shared "We are always very excited to discover stellar teams and disruptive companies solving big problems, and NIRAMAI is definitely one of them. Breast cancer rate is increasing every year and there is a huge gap in the health industry. NIRAMAI’s technology solves this problem for millions of Indian women by early detection and taking preventive measures for breast cancer ahead of time."

Binny Bansal, co-founder of Flipkart said “The innovation from NIRAMAI is solving a key problem in women’s health today. We are happy to partner with this new startup that is socially relevant, innovative and has good market potential."

[Top Image - NIRAMAI Co-founders Dr. Geetha Manjunath & Nidhi Mathur (L-R)]