As India continues to fight against the second wave of COVID19, the state of healthcare in India is in sharp focus. India has a total of 43,486 hospitals, 1.18 million beds, 59,264 ICUs and 29,631 ventilators. And all for a population of 1.3 billion. The resources and manpower are clearly not enough. Many of these gaps can however be filled using technology. The arrival of COVID19 in India last year actively spurred the medical fraternity and tech sectors to find solutions that can manage the fallout of the pandemic. One of the most pertinent challenges was the availability of radiologists - India has only 10,000. With COVID19 affecting lungs more critically than other organs, there was a pressing need for radiologists who could read CT-scans, chest X-rays and the like. This step was especially necessary to combine with RT-PCR tests to accurately determine the extent of lung damage in COVID-positive patients. 

And this was one crucial area where technology was scaled in the past year. Companies like Qure.ai, 5C Network and Predible Health are now among the most sought after solutions by healthcare providers to study scans, conduct imaging for patients and produce results rapidly. Bangalore-based Predible Health is very busy these days. College mates and cofounders Suthirth Vaidya, Abhijith Chundru and Adarsh Raj started the company in 2016, which was an extension of their undergraduate project on applying deep learning to analyse neuro imaging and MRIs, to eventually develop AI-based solutions for analysis of radiology imaging. Their flagship product, LungIQ, helps physicians deliver an accurate diagnosis of diseased lungs using AI. 

LungIQ provides disease-specific insights from chest CT imaging. The software is developed using 3D deep learning technology that is trained on over 200,000 patient data collected from multiple geographies. We cover a broad range of findings including lung cancer, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, pulmonary fibrosis, and COVID19. Each of these disease conditions has been rigorously validated through independent clinical studies and has shown accuracies exceeding 95%. LungIQ works to augment the radiologist, helping them report faster with increased precision. Reports generated using LungIQ have quantitative and visual insights of the disease that set them apart from routine radiology reports. For COVID specifically, upon uploading a chest CT scan, the software automatically generates a report with the CT Severity Scoring according to the latest guidelines. The generated report is then reviewed and signed off by the reporting radiologist. Being cloud-based, the software is cloud-based and can integrate with all CT scanners. 

“We are seeing a huge backlog of studies at hospital sites with reports delayed by multiple days. The overall workflow helps save time and cater to the huge burden of studies on a daily basis,” says Vaidya. 

Predible is helping large corporate hospitals and standalone diagnostic labs to conduct chest CT imaging. Vaidya says more than 25 hospitals and diagnostics labs use LungIQ today and Predible Health processes around 1,000 studies on a daily basis. The startup works with 5C Network, leveraging their extensive network of teleradiology centres, while they have updated Mahajan Imaging's software enabling them to treat COVID19 patients. In addition, Predible Health works with radiology equipment manufacturers, radiology IT providers and teleradiology providers to reach a large network of benefactors. 

Currently, in the COVID19 scenario, Predible Health aids in the quick and accurate estimation of the CT Severity Score, which is an important biomarker to decide on admission for the patient and also prioritize bed allocation. "We are working with a few institutes to help monitor recovery in patients who have recovered from moderate to severe COVID19. LungIQ can potentially help quantify and monitor the amount of scarring in the lungs of such patients," says Vaidya.

Recently, the team launched a publicly available cloud on their website, which enables anyone with a CT scan to upload their images and obtain a COVID19 severity quantification report instantly. This can potentially help several patients obtain a second opinion with detailed quantification of their disease severity. Vaidya reveals that they plan on making this facility available for the other analyses as well, including post-COVID fibrosis.

Predible Health has been part of prestigious startup programmes like C-CAMP, Nvidia Inception, Philips Healthworks and GE Healthcare Edisonx. The startup has raised $500,000 to date and is hoping to procure regulatory approvals from Europe and US markets.