PRESCO DIGITAL HEALTH PLATFORM

AVYANTRA HEALTH TECHNOLOGIES PVT LTD

PRESCO DIGITAL HEALTH PLATFORM

PreSco, a digital health platform for early diagnosis of neonatal sepsis and combating antimicrobial resistance

Hyderabad, Telangana, India

IND

For-profit, including B-Corp or similar models

We are trying to solve the problem of a lack of rapid diagnosis for Neonatal sepsis and growing antimicrobial resistance among Neonates.  Neonatal infections account for 25% of deaths of newborn babies and 10% of deaths of infants under the age of five across the globe. They are responsible for 33% of mortality due to bacterial infections occurring in developing countries. Primary factors for high neonatal mortality rate are delayed diagnosis (culture reports take between 48 and 72 hours), current blood and culture test limitations (false negatives, specificity, etc), low access to specialized healthcare in rural areas, and low affordability. Travel anywhere between 70 Kms to 100 Kms to avail of an advanced test, such as a bacterial culture test, lack of adequate cold storage facilities to transport blood samples for advanced testing, resulting in contamination and false negatives, are among the key reasons for high neonatal mortality in low-resource countries. Moreover, in the absence of specific laboratory tests for neonatal sepsis and the inherent protean nature of the non-specific symptoms, accurate clinical diagnosis of neonatal sepsis continues to remain a challenge, with delays in diagnosis and treatment being common issues. 

Our solution, PreSco (Predictive Scoring), is a cloud-based machine learning platform that takes babies' clinical symptoms as inputs, provides a risk score for neonatal sepsis as an output, and aids in effective decision making. PreSco can be accessed from any computing, mobile, or touchscreen device. The current architecture of PreSco is such that available clinical parameters/reports can be entered into the application, which are transmitted to a cloud server where the platform’s EMR platform and machine learning algorithms are housed. The algorithms compute a neonatal sepsis/infection risk score. This risk score, which is colour coded - red for high risk, orange for medium risk, and green for low risk, is returned to the device. PreSco has been developed to empower health volunteers and practitioners who work in low-resource areas. A risk-factor approach for aiding evidence-based decision making has proven to be effective in reducing infant mortality due to neonatal sepsis in low-resource settings. Research and evidence from high-income countries strongly recommend using a combination of clinical signs along with risk factors for effective neonatal management in low- and middle-income countries to improve diagnosis and treatment of neonates with sepsis.

The primary beneficiary groups of our solution are as follows – i. Rural Clinics and primary healthcare professionals – Low resource and infrastructural constraints hamper the rapid diagnosis of neonatal sepsis. Our Solution offers early diagnosis of neonatal sepsis, which doctors, hospitals, neonatologists, and primary healthcare workers can use. ii. Mother and Children – Young mothers and infants struggle to commute to tertiary care centers to receive quality healthcare from an urban health center. Our platform helps address this issue by helping primary centers handle much of their patient load instead of transferring them to tertiary centers. It can significantly reduce 40% of deaths of newborn babies caused by transport delays. iii. Parents and clinicians can use our EMR platform to store and retrieve babies' medical records for health management.