The headline reads awful but is factual. AI in healthcare currently ticks three very unpleasant boxes, but thankfully there is a way to ‘reform’ AI from its poor performance.
AI has caused a mass of disappointment, because the hyped power of AI has not been realized; to help achieve far better healthcare outcomes for people with greater precision and speed. Sundar Pichai, Google’s boss, has even described developments in AI as “more profound than fire or electricity.” However, currently AI attracts headlines such as the one below, published by Nature. Search 'is AI racist?' and you'll find a lot of reading material.
Why AI is elitist, misogynistic and racially biased
It all boils down to understanding the role of data for building commercial AI products in healthcare. People normally associate data volume as the key to AI performance, but for healthcare it is all about the quality and diversity of data, and this is where current healthcare AI becomes 'elitist'. Many AI solutions only work in a very small, unscalable environment – perfect for the very few who fall within a specific context.
AI remains 'elitist' because accessing diverse data is extremely difficult and expensive, two major challenges Presagen has managed to solve. When healthcare AI products are built using uniform data, the AI cannot work with different companies or users, in different contexts or situations, nor in different geographical locations.
With many AI products being developed in advanced economies and using data from only top hospitals and institutions, the resulting AI often does not reflect the diversity of the real world of developing countries, women, or minority groups; that's billions of people missing the empowerment AI can deliver.
Our approach to building scalable AI which billions of people can access, is different to the 'more data is better' mantra. For healthcare the keys to commercializing powerful AI are: Data Quality + Data Diversity, with expert domain knowledge about the problem and how the AI will be used in practice. A clear differentiator of course is our focus on Women's Health, and ensuring that our products are purpose built for all of womankind.
Due to a long history of neglect Women's Health is an opportunity to improve an under serviced part of the market, which happens to be 50% of humanity. Women also adopt digital tools faster than men, and make the majority of healthcare decisions in the household, which makes this focus a sound business decision.
The first evidence of 'reform' – the global IVF industry
Presagen's first product, Life Whisperer, uses AI to non-invasively assess images of IVF patients’ embryos. It has two capabilities: Viability which predicts likelihood that the embryo will lead to clinical pregnancy; and Genetics which predicts likelihood that the embryo is genetically normal.
The performance of Life Whisperer Viability and Genetics delivers everything that people get excited about when it comes to AI. Scientific papers and independent studies have validated our results; improved embryo selection and faster time to a clinical pregnancy. This is because the AI can see and analyze embryo features that are too complex to detect manually or invisible to the human eye.
The amazing thing with Life Whisperer is the support it offers women everywhere. It is more than just making an assessment of an embryo, the technology is predicting likelihood of a clinical pregnancy with greater accuracy than what a human can.
We have decentralized global cloud infrastructure and unique algorithms that enables us to access, clean and connect data from specialized clinics, in full compliance with regional privacy and security laws, from diverse and remote regions all over the world, such as India, Vietnam and Trinidad & Tobago, to USA, Europe and Australia.
Our Life Whisperer products are also highly affordable. Even the smallest clinic in remote parts of Asia can offer best-in-class technology to their patients, using a basic lab microscope and internet connection.
The world is full of different specialized clinics. Why not digitalize them?
What if specialist AI healthcare services operated like Netflix? One digital environment with many ‘titles’ of on-demand healthcare, regardless of who or where you are? That would be attractive to billions of people globally.
This is why we are combining scalable AI, a decentralized global data-sharing model, and the network effect – to help people rich or poor, regardless of race, to access AI based products that enriches their lives. We have created a data sharing approach where contributors have full control of their data, and maintain privacy and ownership of the data they choose to contribute. We also see a host of other specialized healthcare markets who can benefit from our complete solution.
And let's face it, specialist healthcare providers have many opportunities to empower their patients and deliver extra value. The exciting thing is, whenever industries decentralize and leverage the network effect and sharing, this shifts power from the few large dominant players to the masses who would not otherwise have a voice or be represented.
Historically this model makes incredible commercial sense – some of the largest tech companies in the world like Facebook, YouTube or Uber use the same approach, so why not healthcare? This is what Presagen is all about, with a mission to transform the AI healthcare industry so we can provide affordable and accessible healthcare for all of womankind.
As we build globally scalable healthcare services, we are ensuring that these services work with and for the consumer and specialized clinics alike. To enhance the relationship and provide more people, with more access to healthcare that matters.
We call it, The Social Network for Healthcare, and it services everyone equitably, regardless of who or where they are.