(May 31): As robots continue to displace factory workers and payment terminals replace cashiers, a Snapchat for the medical industry could change the way healthcare professionals work. Local start-up KroniKare is developing a mobile application that assesses chronic wounds and presents a preliminary assessment to nurses or other healthcare workers.
Patients use the app to create a five-second video of their wounds, which is analysed by the app within 30 seconds. The process does not do away with the need for nurses, but could help a short-handed clinic or hospital take care of more patients. “Wound care nurses need automation because the process is very manual today,” says KroniKare founder Hossein Nejati. “They visually assess, physically probe and measure the wound. It takes 30 minutes. We can help speed up the process.”
Nejati, a post-doctoral researcher at the Singapore University of Technology and Design who specialises in machine learning, is betting he can fine-tune his system to be at least 90% as accurate as human nurses. “Our AI technology is benchmarked against the head nurse at a community hospital in Singapore that treats chronic patients. We are currently 80% as accurate,” he says. At times, the system has even been able to surpass the ability of the nurses. KroniKare plans to roll out the snap-and-diagnose tool within the next year.
