What is the name of your solution?
E-Carebetics AI Diagnostic Tool
Provide a one-line summary of your solution.
E-Carebetics provides an AI diagnostic solution for diabetic retinopathy using mobile AI software combining a low-cost phone attached ophthalmoscope.
Film your elevator pitch.
What specific problem are you solving?
Currently, there are over 500 million people in the world that have diabetes, and about 30% of them develop diabetic retinopathy, or DR, one of the most common causes of blindness. And over 90% of DR patients live in developing countries. Early diagnosis and treatment can stop the progression and prevent blindness, but people in developing countries are not getting the early diagnosis because of three major problems: Lack of affordable screening tools, lack of access for the patients, and lack of doctors to perform the screening.
The first problem is the high cost of a fundus camera. Taking fundus images is the best way to diagnose DR. However, there is minimal adoption in developing countries due to the cost of a fundus camera.
The second major problem is patients cannot and will not go to the doctor's office due to location, harsh environment, and the cost of the travel. Approximately 165 million individuals who have vision impairment in India reside in rural regions with little or no access to diagnosis and eye care. The government and NGOs host many medical camps, and traveling nurses go to the villages to conduct essential physical exams. But, without a diagnostic tool and specialty, they still cannot conduct DR screening.
The third major problem is the shortage of healthcare professionals. India only has one ophthalmologist for every 100,000 people, which is 80% below the recommended ratio of 1:20,000. Also, in the case of diagnosing DR, a diabetologist is the first point of contact for diabetic patients. However, diabetologists cannot perform DR screening due to the lack of training in ophthalmology. And this problem is the same for nurses and medical camp
workers. Therefore, more medical professionals need to have ophthalmologists' screening capability to alleviate the screening pressure.
What is your solution?
E-Carebtics can address these problems by providing the healthcare workers the capability to conduct diagnoses for DR using an AI mobile APP with a mobile attached ophthalmoscope. The time spent for each diagnosis is reduced by over 77%, significantly increasing the efficiency. Based on our study, we have found that our AI model can achieve over 20% better accuracy than the average doctor’s diagnosis. Also, our scope is designed to be compatible with over 95% of the smartphones in the market.
Who does your solution serve, and in what ways will the solution impact their lives?
We are targeting diabetologists, neurologists, pedestrians, traveling nurses to screen diabetic patients quickly, efficiently, and economically at their own facility which will help them screen more patients, reduce the burden on the health system and make more informed diagnosis decisions without waiting for an ophthalmologists review.
How are you and your team well-positioned to deliver this solution?
We are a team of three engineers (Biomedical Engineer, Electrical Engineer, and Data Engineer). We all came from developing countries (India and China), and we have a strong local network in India. We also have a team of eye doctors and pediatricians to guide us in the clinical settings, and we have a team of industry veterans to mentor us in business development.
Which dimension of the Challenge does your solution most closely address?
Build fundamental, resilient, and people-centered health infrastructure that makes essential services, equipment, and medicines more accessible and affordable for communities that are currently underserved;
Where our solution team is headquartered or located:
Pittsburgh, PA, USAOur solution's stage of development:
PilotHow many people does your solution currently serve?
Over 15 million people in India.
Why are you applying to Solve?
We would like to have legal guidance in terms of regulation and patent application. We are currently having a hard time applying for a patent due to a lack of financial resources, and we wonder if Solve can help us with this.
In which of the following areas do you most need partners or support?
Legal or Regulatory Matters
Who is the Team Lead for your solution?
Bingda Li
What makes your solution innovative?
At E-Carebetics we are developing a novel illumination technique that lets us use a smartphone’s flashlight as a source to illuminate the retina at different angles. This approach will let us capture a wider field of view of the posterior region of the retina and thus gives us a huge advantage in providing a solution that has no electrical component, is compatible with almost 95% of the smartphones in the market, and is intuitive to use. The only limiting factor for the operation of the smartphone ophthalmoscope is the battery of the smartphone. Our handheld smartphone ophthalmoscope along with our illumination technique and the embedded software captures colored retinal images with similar color profiles and lets the user share those images with us which are geotagged and AI labeled. All our customers have an incentive in the form of the “Share more to Payless” scheme in which the more retinal images you capture using our ophthalmoscope and upload them to our database through our app, the less subscription you will have to pay for that particular month. This will provide us with regional geotagged retinal image datasets which we can use for improving our AI model thus increasing its accuracy in detecting diabetic retinopathy for particular ethnicity and tribe. This solution will significantly improve the scarcity of retinal datasets and will let more research thrive on regional levels that are ongoing for retinal diagnosis. More doctors will be able to get in touch with a specific set of retinal diseases and specific case studies can be documented through a patient's ailments tagged in each image. All the image sharing and storage comes under HIPAA compliance and it is only shared after receiving an individual patients’ consent. Our approach has a potential catalytic effect in reducing the risk of diabetic retinopathy in the coming years via more diagnoses due to greater smartphone and internet penetration in developing countries along with dataset creation, management, and usage for research. It will greatly impact the big data revolution bringing more innovation and research in diagnosis through retinal images, the only noninvasive way to see blood vessels in the human body.
What are your impact goals for the next year and the next five years, and how will you achieve them?
Our goal for the next year is to obtain certification for our ABS plastic non-electrical smartphone ophthalmoscope and deploy it at Public Health Centers (PHC) and Community Health Centers (CHC) in tier 2 and tier 3 cities of India to conduct more eye fundus screenings. The product will be used by medical professionals comprising diabetologists, ophthalmologists, neurologists, traveling nurses in remote locations of India to conduct more retinal screening and identify patients with the severity and progression of diabetic retinopathy thus reducing the time to receive treatment and care for the patient. The
How are you measuring your progress toward your impact goals?
We have been conducting customer discovery interviews with clinicians and medical professionals from different parts of India, trying to understand their pain points and current screening methodology. Our impact goal is to meet the medical professionals' needs and cater to their pain points thus we are measuring our progress in terms of innovating a solution that is an easy, efficient, and economical solution that provides a wider field of view, ease of capturing images, frictionless adoption.
What is your theory of change?
Our solution E-Carebetics is a solution for the current diabetic global epidemic affecting an estimated 537million people worldwide today and its sight-threatening complication of diabetic retinopathy. Early detection and treatment can stop the progression and prevent blindness, but people in developing countries are not getting an early diagnosis because of three major problems. Lack of affordable screening tools, lack of access for the patients, and lack of doctors to perform the screening. E-Carebtics can address these problems by providing the healthcare workers the capability to conduct diagnoses for DR using an AI mobile APP with a mobile attached ophthalmoscope. The time spent for each diagnosis is reduced by over 77%, significantly increasing the efficiency. Based on reviewing publications, we have found that our AI model can achieve over 20% better accuracy than the average doctor’s diagnosis. Also, our scope is designed to be compatible with over 95% of the smartphones in the market. This approach enables us to reduce the hospital burden and help medical professionals conduct more screening thus reducing the chances of DR progressions which may lead to blindness if gone undetected.
Describe the core technology that powers your solution.
The core technology is our smartphone attached non-electrical ophthalmoscope combined with an AI-powered diagnostic software app based on the deep learning CNN model for image classification and pattern recognition.
Which of the following categories best describes your solution?
A new technology
How do you know that this technology works?
We have developed the prototype and tested it with the doctors in the clinical setting in India. The device can take clear images, and our AI model is able to analyze the image.
Please select the technologies currently used in your solution:
Which of the UN Sustainable Development Goals does your solution address?
In which countries do you currently operate?
In which countries will you be operating within the next year?
What is your business model?
The core service of our business is AI diagnostic software, and it will be sold based on a subscription model. The number of subscriptions in each organization depends on how many workers use it. For example, if a hospital has five diabetologists and five nurses using the service for screening, then a total of 10 subscriptions will be purchased. This way, our customers can have a flexible payment option, and their cost will depend on their organization size and also data collection as mentioned previously. We are having 3 tier pricing models including 1) Freemium trial 2) Individual & 3) Enterprise:
1. The Freemium trial drives vitality, and low customer work is required. It can deliver high value which leverages competitive urge and act as a trigger to pivot towards a full purchase also it builds trust through a clear demonstration of expertise.
2. The Individual plan will enable individual medical professionals and clinicians to subscribe and choose from our software suite plans for different model suits. For example, the Diabetic Retinopathy model, the AMD model, and the Glaucoma model. This will enable clinicians to choose the diagnosis they would want to provide to their patients. This plan provides a flexible payment option, which not only enhances the revenue stream but also reduces unnecessary costs for the customers.
3. The Enterprise plan consists of the complete suite with all models included for diagnosis along with CRM system integration for patient healthcare data maintenance.
Do you primarily provide products or services directly to individuals, to other organizations, or to the government?
Organizations (B2B)What is your plan for becoming financially sustainable?
We will be applying for various grants and competitions for prizes. We also already have been approached by various angel investors and venture capitalists who are interested in investing in us. Once we can start commercialization, we expect to break even in the first 6 months and generate income after that to sustain our business.
Solution Team
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Our Organization
E-Carebetics