Democratizing Eyecare in India & Globally using Artificial Intelligence to Combat Blindness
When I was selected for the MIT Media lab — LVPEI’s Engineering the Eye Innovations program during July 2016 at Hyderabad, we innovators were asked to study about the basics of Ophthalmology and existing technologies for treatment and diagnostics of Eye diseases. Once I got to know about the critical problems in Eye care in India through market research from early screening to treatment of the patients in India, where there was a huge gap between the required need and existing solutions offered in India, I believed that I must do something to solve the problem of blindness in India and globally. Thanks to LVPEI (Srujana Team, lead by Dhruv Joshi), we got the opportunity and got exposed to rural areas of Andhra Pradesh to visit the primary, secondary Eye care hospitals and understand the landscape and ground reality of the space. There are only 45,000 optometrists in India, when there is a requirement of about 1,25,000 optometrists for the country’s population and leading to severe handicap on early screening of children. Primary healthcare is something, the country falls short at the moment. There is need for emphasis on screening the rural and underprivileged as the country is the second most populous country in the world and has tremendous unmet need for ophthalmic care. India is home to 18 percent of the world’s population and approximately 30 percent of the world’s blind people.
During the MIT Media lab — LVPEI Eye care Innovations at Hyderabad, we were asked to write research proposals to provide solutions for combating corneal blindness and the winner would be awarded with incubation and acceleration support to take forward the project at Srujana Innovations Center which was part of the LVPEI Eye care hospital in Hyderabad and they were the host of MIT Media lab collaboration in doing innovations in the ophthalmic care. Corneal blindness is the second major causes of blindness in the world and most of the Corneally blind people live in India. Around 75% of these cases are preventable, if the patients are diagnosed and treated earlier. There is need for corneal donor tissues and the supply of it is not enough to fulfill the existing population of blind people in India. I strongly believe that with technology such as Artificial Intelligence, it is possible for eliminating the need to avail corneal donor tissues someday by preventing disease progression using various interventions in technology and with early stage diagnostics and accelerating therapies in accomplishing democratizing Eye care in India and Globally as well.
So I have come up with few research ideas and methodologies in using AI, machine learning algorithm approaches in tackling the corneal blindness for detection of diseases such as Keratoconus etc, while I was working with our team in building topography imaging device for detecting corneal abnormalities which works on the principle of pattern detection. The more I studied about the existing problems in the ophthalmic care, about cornea and technologies built around it, the more interested and inspired I was in solving this important problem which could make a difference in the society by helping people see the world. Eventually I ended up starting “CornealX” — An AI and Big data based healthcare solutions platform with the vision to cure diseases which are all preventable, while providing affordable and accessible healthcare solutions. So I am working on CornealX, since then with this vision and purpose oriented to not only use AI, big data technologies to solve problems in Eye care, but also in other areas of healthcare as well such as Cancer, Tumor, heart diseases, chronic diseases and other prevalent diseases which could be prevented if there is strong intervention of AI in automating the processes giving great insights for doctors to help them understand in interpretation at high accuracy and facilitate in accelerating therapies.
There is a great opportunity in applying Deep learning algorithms, imaging solutions for better interpretation of diseases and this could revolutionize and democratize the healthcare in India and globally considering the efficiency and amount of specificity it could provide. Below is the image an deep learning algorithms flowchart, which could be applied for various areas in healthcare in perspective of imaging analysis.
Considering the amount of complexities in healthcare, it is important for us to understand the scenarios with proper clinical support, expert advice while building AI products for healthcare solutions and also emphasize on the usage of the various algorithms in machine learning, deep learning such as Reinforced learning algorithms, Reinforced CNN algorithms and other algorithms which are basically used at various use case scenarios. It is not something you use only a specific algorithm, but a combination of algorithms at various scenarios. Annotation and verification is very much essential in dealing with large data sets of medical images for training of the AI Platform and optimizing things over the time.
One of the things that I am obsessed about is that in reaching the masses all over India by basically building a strong AI platform driven by algorithms which could automate the processes of early screening of patients for retinal, corneal diseases and other disease diagnostics through clinical support from secondary, primary hospitals . Google had been working on AI based applications for Diabetes Retinopathy which could be a breakthrough in solving diabetes related eye disease problems.
At CornealX, we are working on Automated AI Algorithm based on Deep Machine Learning for detection for Corneal, Retinal diseases and other prevalent eye diseases which are the below features in it :
- High specificity and sensitivity
- Consistency of Interpretation
- Instantaneous reports of results and Insights
During the CamTech MGH jugaadathon program, I worked with a team of two developers on a few specific machine learning algorithms which could detect corneal diseases earlier such as Keratoconus and Terrien’s corneal marginal degeneration diseases which are progressive in nature.
http://camtechmgh.org/innovation/detail_view/465#!
So I am Optimistic about using Artificial Intelligence and other technologies for democratizing Eye care/Healthcare globally with the vision to cure diseases someday that can be preventable and which is the reason I started working on CornealX and also to help, inspire people around us to bring awareness about the healthcare issues in the society and how we can impact positively by using technologies to solve these issues and make a change for billions around the world.
We are actively seeking Partnerships for Development and Deployment of these AI based technologies for healthcare solutions. If interested, please do contact us and visit our page.
Thank you.
Founder & CEO of CornealX
