Jul 29
2019
Top Startups That Will Change Healthcare
By Michael Dehoyos, web developer, PhDKingdom and Next Coursework.
Technology is advancing at an unbelievably rapid pace and there are new breakthroughs every day for artificial intelligence and big data in multiple industries. They have the potential to completely revolutionize the field of healthcare and some changes are already starting to take place. This article will cover the top startup companies in healthcare that are at the forefront of the AI revolution and what their products and discoveries mean for the medical industry.
Sword Health is the first digital physical therapist that is powered by AI. The company recognized a need in the industry because they noticed that there was always a lack of experienced medical specialists. Even with the number of professionals finishing their medical training each year, there is an increasing demand for them which cannot be met. The AI-powered physical therapist created by Sword Health limits the input of human specialists to elaborating the initial personalized physical therapy journey for each patient. After this step, the patient does their regular exercises at home and their motion tracker will let them know if each exercise was done properly. This saves the patient having to make regular trips to the hospital for physical therapy and allows the specialists to see more people quicker.
Prognos’ goal is to completely eradicate the world of diseases by developing a tool that will identify disease at the onset. This company, formerly known as Medivo, has an ambitious goal which is to use AI and data analysis to predict disease at the earliest possible moment. A tech blogger at Australia2Write, Richard Key, explains why Prognos is so valuable to the medical industry: “Their database can access 13 billion patient records and then AI is used to gain actionable information. The registry helps Prognos figure out which patients are most at risk and develop a plan for treatment that’s personalized to each individual. It can also identify populations at risk and look for gaps in existing care.”
Flatiron Health is aimed at the challenge posed by cancer in the diversity and complexity of the disease. It’s too difficult for doctors or healthcare organizations to deal with on their own so the entire industry needs to be used to make any advancement in this field. Flatiron Health is a company that’s developed an electronic health record (EHR) to unify all the medical data that exists thus far and pull insights from it in order to move cancer research forward at a rapid pace.
At its core, Babylon Health is a tool that permits patients to consult human doctors or other medical specialists online, through text or video in real time. As explained by a data analyst at Brit Student, John Hunt, “It also has an AI component which is a chatbot that can assist patients with simpler, more straightforward issues. Its capacity extends to making diagnoses and recommending treatment options.”
The goal of Babylon Health’s company is to eventually have a completely self-sustainable doctor powered by AI, so it seems as though the future of healthcare is receiving treatments without seeing a human doctor at any point.
Arterys’ focus is radiology and it uses AI to help existing human radiologists. Their oncology AI software is already approved in the United States by the FDA and it actually assists radiologists in measuring and tracking tumors in MRIs and CT scans using a user-friendly, easy browser. The goal with this is to get accurate and quick cancer diagnoses. The AI-powered tool uses what it’s learned to recognize and alert to lung and liver lesions and its accuracy has been shown to equal human specialists.
This is another American startup, but one whose focus is on female fertility. Modern Fertility is a fertility hormone test for women to use in the comfort and privacy of their own home. All they need to do is take a finger-prick test and mail it to the company, and then they’ll receive a report approved by a physician which tells them more information about their hormones and a complete fertility profile. It’s partnered with a medical facility in the United States and was founded by former Uber executives.