AlemHealth AI Radiologist in a Box

Connecting medical facilities anywhere to the future of AI-assisted radiology reporting.

Radiology reporting is essential to the accurate diagnosis and effective treatment of diseases ranging from cancer to tuberculosis. There is a shortage of radiologists globally, and those that do exist are disconnected from the medical images they need to report on. Facilities want to digitise, but traditional radiology hardware and software fails spectacularly in resource-constrained settings and is priced out of their budget.

For hospitals, imaging centers and radiologists in developing countries, AlemHealth has developed a low-cost AI Radiologist in a Box that connects these centers to a global provider network, and provides them with AI at the point of care, all at a price they can afford. We’ve re-imagined what medical imaging hardware and software should be like for developing countries, with a focus on power efficiency and performance when internet bandwidth is limited, as well as AI-powered assistants and workflow tools to improve radiologist efficiency and accuracy.

Radiologists across town or anywhere in the world can login to the AlemHealth Cloud platform and report on studies that centres with our AlemBox hardware or the AlemHealth Connect Uploader software have sent them. Patient and clinicians can directly access their reports on the AlemHealth patient app from anywhere and get the appropriate treatment anywhere it is available. 

We’ve re-imagined what medical imaging hardware and software should be like for developing countries.

The AlemBox hardware uses embedded mobile CPUs and GPUs, transferring up to 14x more data across high latency networks than traditional radiology servers, at a fraction of the costs and power consumption. It places AI right at the edge at the point of care, allowing automated analysis to happen prior to the studies being transferred anywhere. The AlemBox software was designed using modern browser-based technologies to minimise training requirements and assist radiologists to provide accurate and timely reporting. 

Without our hardware or software, facilities are often limited to couriering CDs across the country, or sharing low-resolution, compressed pictures of X-Ray films with each other over WhatsApp, neither solution providing fast access to high quality images for radiologists to provide an accurate diagnosis. 

The AlemHealth hardware is possible now due to the computational power and power efficiency of embedded and low-power CPUs and GPUs, while the software takes advantage of modern browser-based technologies for seamless offline and online access to radiology with maximum security and performance.     

In terms of user growth, we plan to sign up every radiologist in Africa and South Asia to access their studies on our online platform. We’re well on our way with nearly 100 radiologists using our platform thus far. 

In doing so, we want to digitise access for our next million patients.

We believe our platform will be used by nearly all radiologists throughout Africa and Asia to share medical images securely and quickly. In doing so, it will assist us in getting the right images to the right radiologists faster and more cost effectively. In addition, as our data set increases, our ability to provide AI-powered triage and workflow assistance tools for radiologists increases as well, since we are building a large curated medical imaging repository.

We market our services directly to radiologists through online ads (Google, LinkedIn) as well as offline activities (radiology conferences, phone campaigns, etc.). The radiologists connect us to the centres they would like to report for, at which point we’re able to provide connectivity to them. 

For patients, we have an online webapp that we market both through online means and point of care advertisements like pamphlets and brochures.

We have hundreds of radiologists actively using our platform to report on radiology studies and over 1m patient records on our platform to date. Patients are able to directly access their patient records using our webapp, as well as other tools including a symptom checker.

We will be expanding by a rate of 50-100 radiologists per month over the next 12 months, with each centre bringing hundreds of patients per day. We will also expand our service to patients with other offerings including insurance pricing and pharmaceutical delivery. In 3 years, we would expect to have in excess of 10m patient records on our platform.

We have significant experience in building technology solutions and managing operations that work in and for developing countries. We've built technologies and teams that have been deployed in Afghanistan, Nigeria, Bangladesh, and other challenging markets with success. 

Each AlemBox device is priced in an infrastructure-as-a-service model, providing a monthly payment to us, while minimising up front costs to the facilities. We also have a panel of radiologists that we've built in the US and India, for which we facilitate sending studies to and earn a margin there as well. We also charge for add-on modules such as our receptionist module, which facilities use to manage schedules and send reminders to patients.

Finally, our patient app where the patients receive their results also has numerous monetisation opportunities, including insurance quotations, prescription deliveries (in certain markets), and others.

We spend the vast majority of our time in healthcare facilities throughout Asia and Africa, and little of our time with the global community in the US,  EU, and elsewhere. We believe MIT Solve will bring awareness to the global community of what is possible in developing countries, and how the AlemHealth platform (and other for-profit initiatives) can sustainably provide healthcare services in these countries.

Aid & development funds for healthcare have ignored the private sector, and NCDs in particular. For AlemHealth to succeed, we would like to see more engagement of the private sector in delivering public health outcomes in emerging markets. Moreover, we would like to see the aid & development community begin allocating resources to take on NCDs including Cancer, Cardiovascular Disease, and Diabetes before the problems become too great for the public health systems to handle.