Tambua Intelligent Diagnostics

Listening to your health.

Tuberculosis and Pneumonia are Africa’s most severe health crisis. According to the World Health Organization 2017 statistics, Tuberculosis and Lower Respiratory Tract infections cause 1.4 million deaths in Africa each year. This is approximately 3800 deaths each day. 95% of Tuberculosis and Lower Respiratory Tract infections deaths occur in low and middle-income countries, African countries lead the count here. Lack of access to early diagnosis, cheap healthcare and stigma are the leading causes of these deaths. However, with proper care and treatment, Tuberculosis and Lower Respiratory Tract infections are diseases that can be completely cured. And early detection is vital in ascertaining results. While it is exciting that new drugs are coming into the market, better and cheap diagnostic testing solutions are a critical need. Only then can there be more guidance for effective treatment. 

We developed the Tambua App which is a cross platform smartphone application for diagnosing Tuberculosis and Pneumonia. We are leveraging the abundance of smartphones in Africa to turn them into diagnostic tools. The Tambua app is very easy to use, the user coughs into his/her microphone in a quiet room without any extraneous noise. Takes at least 4 cough samples for 12 seconds each while your microphone is placed at less than your arm's length. The app does a spectral analysis of a recorded sound file of a person’s cough. The Tambua App utilizes cutting edge technology development in the fields of spectral analysis, Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning. We are extracting mathematical features to describe cough characteristics. We are also leveraging AI and Data analytics to develop our pattern recognition and anomaly detection in data. Using these technologies  we can establish if the person is infected with TB and Pneumonia or not just by using a recorded sound wave on a smartphone.

We are a premier medical technology company venturing where many people have not. Our biggest competitors are the TB and Pneumonia Diagnosis Kit manufacturers such as AccuQuik Testing Kit which is sold to clinics and are relatively expensive. The world is moving towards non-invasive methods of diagnosis of infections but they are often very expensive. We are using the 725 Million available smartphones and turning them into diagnostic tools. We have a Market competitive advantage because our Tambua App which is a mobile application for screening Tuberculosis (TB) and Pneumonia can be used by both medical specialists and the public.

Cutting edge Technology is at the core of our solution. We are using spectral analysis algorithms to convert a persons cough sound wave to a discrete form from which the digital format can be analyzed and stored in a database. We are utilizing AI and Machine learning to create pattern recognition capabilities which categories a persons cough. This is the basis of how we are able to determine if a person has a TB or Pneumonia, when a cough is pathological in nature it has a specific characteristic which the algorithm can pick up.

In one year's time we want 3500 clinics in Africa to be using our Tambua Application System. We will invest more in research and development and improved our diagnosis accuracy to 95%. We want to develop an Interactive Voice Response platform to be used by people in Rural areas without access to the internet. We are looking to reduce the number of deaths by TB and Pneumonia by 20% by the end of the year.

In the next three to five years. We will not only be diagnosing TB and Pneumonia but also lung cancer, emphysema, chronic bronchitis, and asthma. We will have expanded our solution to other developing countries such as countries in South East Asia and South America. We will be working with smartphone manufacturers and Operating System Manufacturers to pre-integrate our technology to their personal assistants like Siri or Cortana.

The Tambua Application is free for the public to download for Android and Its devices. The public can self diagnose through the application. There is however a special version of the Tambua App which is to be used by doctors and public officials. The application features a Medical Record Management System and a Clinical Decision Support System.  

We are currently serving 500 clinics across Africa. In these region people infected with Tuberculosis and Pneumonia have no way of knowing about their condition without being tested by a doctor or visiting a clinic.Doctors sometimes lack the required equipment’s to diagnose these diseases. We have been able to diagnose over 2300 TB and Pneumonia cases. We are saving lives and improving peoples lives.

We are expecting to serve approximately 280,000 people this year, this represents about 20% of the people who die each year due to TB and Pneumonia across Africa. We will work with healthcare distribution channel partners, non-profit organizations, government agencies and independent institutions to provide this solution to clinics all over africa and to the public.

We are team of computer scientists, acoustic engineers and lower respiratory tract medical specialists. We have worked together for more than three years. We believe in the intersection of computer science, physics and medicine to offer cheap and accessible diagnostic tools solutions in Africa. We met in Kenya while developing a Tuberculosis Mapping and Mitigation System for the Kenyan Ministry of health and the United States Aid. We have worked for fortune 500 companies including Google and IBM.

The Tambua App has been mostly used by medical health practitioners in hospitals and clinics. The basic version is offered for free to the public while the premium version for hospitals and clinics is offered using a monthly subscription model. We are also targeting non-profits and government agencies such as USAID and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation which have a lot of medical projects in Africa. 

We believe in the power of collaboration and Systemic change to improve healthcare in Africa. MIT has world renowned professors and researchers in the sectors of Spectral Analysis, AI and Deep Analytics. We are in need of mentors to help us improve the accuracy of our Diagnostic Tool. The MIT ethos is to generate, disseminate and preserve knowledge - We believe we could really use MIT prowess to improve our TB and Pneumonia Diagnosis app. 

Currently our Tambua application for diagnosing TB and Pneumonia has an accuracy of 75%. We need to improve the spectral analysis Algorithm, AI algorithm and the Deep Analytics algorithm basing it on the most recent Technology Advancements. Computational Optimization and Architecture has also been a challenge. We also need to access health research institutions to conduct cross validation between our Tambua App and other industry standard methods.