Medical technology can deliver immense value to the health of individuals and communities. Of all the economic sectors, during the COVID-19 pandemic, it is the health sector that has been under the greatest pressure. Therefore, any innovation will be welcomed by the sector.
One such company is Predictmedix, an emerging provider of rapid health screening solutions operated by a proprietary artificial intelligence.
To learn more about these advanced health innovations and the challenges faced in the past two years, Digital Journal spoke with Dr. Rahul Kushwah, COO, Interim CEO and Co-founder of Predictmedix.
Digital Journal: Can you provide a brief description of Predictmedix?
Rahul Kushwah: Predictmedix (OTCQB: PMEDF) is an emerging provider of rapid health screening and remote patient care solutions globally. Our Safe Entry Stations – powered by a proprietary artificial intelligence (AI) platform – use multispectral cameras to analyze physiological data patterns and predict a variety of health issues including infectious diseases such as COVID-19, impairment by drugs or alcohol, or various brain and mental illnesses in a way that respects the privacy of users. In addition, Predictmedix’s patient care platform empowers medical professionals with a suite of AI-powered tools to improve patient health outcomes.
DJ: What are your Safe Entry Stations designed to do?
Kushwah: Our Safe Entry Stations are flexible and designed for multiple use-cases, including screening for symptoms of infectious diseases associated with COVID-19, and impairment from cannabis and alcohol. Eventually, the Safe Entry Station will be used to provide healthcare practitioners with a simple, non-invasive, measurable diagnostic tool able to detect early signs and symptoms of brain and mental illnesses and disorders like dementia, Alzheimer’s, and depression.
DJ: What types of clients are you currently working with?
Kushwah: We service office buildings, resorts and tier-1 events globally to ensure a safe and secure environment for all attendees. Most notably, we’ve worked with world-renowned racing events such as Formula 1 and with large Super Bowl parties. We are in discussions with countless other executives at organizations ranging from airports to hospitals and even large global companies who want to ensure a safe return to the office.
DJ: How has the pandemic impacted your company?
Kushwah: COVID-19 took our screening technology, which was a more difficult sell prior to COVID, and made the need for quick, non-invasive and cost-effective mass screening crystal clear. Interest in our infectious disease solution has been substantial since the onset of the pandemic, enabling us to fulfill our mission of protecting consumers from not only COVID-19, but from other viruses in the future as well.
DJ: Can you expand on your work with brain and mental health disorders?
Kushwah: Brain and mental illnesses and disorders like Alzheimer’s, dementia, and depression are difficult to detect at early stages. Predictmedix is developing an AI-diagnostic screening tool to determine whether a patient is displaying symptoms, beyond what the human eye can see. The multi-sensor highly-sensitive camera and equipment that accompanies the Safe Entry Station sees what the human eye cannot see (i.e. temperature fluctuations below the skin), and the AI engine determines patterns from thousands of other patients that have displayed symptoms of brain and mental illnesses, to determine whether or not a patient is displaying early signs of said disorders and illnesses.
With that being said, there is still a considerable amount of R&D, clinical trials, and third-party validation that must be completed before we bring to market a reliable and accurate diagnostic tool for brain and mental illnesses and disorders.
DJ: Are there privacy concerns with your technologies?
Kushwah: We are very privacy conscious, and I believe it’s important to note the multi-spectral images our cameras take are not something that would be recognizable to the human eye (i.e. it is very different than a photo you’d take on your phone). We will never save a person’s facial information as there is never a need to. We leverage edge computing and so the AI analysis takes place on device rather than in the cloud. While every jurisdiction and country has different privacy laws, we comply with all of them accordingly.
DJ: What do you expect to see from AI-driven health screening solutions in the next few years?
Kushwah: AI has the potential to impact healthcare in many ways – from enabling better outcomes to treating more patients with less staff. Speaking to screening solutions in particular, we anticipate AI will aid healthcare practitioners in gathering key vital data to reduce intake time in hospitals, leaving nurses to perform important duties without needing to collect the initial data required to process patients. We are happy to announce we are currently working on a health screening system for hospitals with a North American hospital partner as we speak.
