Unitus Seed Fund Invests In Cancer Radiology Startup Predible Health

Artificial Intelligence-based cancer radiology platform Predible Health has raised an undisclosed amount of funding from Unitus Seed Fund, an impact venture fund investing in early stage startups.

Predible Health will the funds to scale its cancer AI platform as well as invest in regulatory approvals for its existing products.

Commenting on the development, Milind Shah, Venture Partner, Unitus Seed Fund, said, “Predible has built an AI-enabled cancer radiology platform that aids radiologists and surgeons to accurately and quickly diagnose and size the cancerous tissue to help plan personalised treatment. This will not only dramatically improve the productivity of the small community of dedicated radiologists but also improve clinical outcomes of treatment and reduce patient mortality.”

Predible Health is working on cancer diagnosis through its AI-powered clinical applications for liver and lung cancers, which enable radiologists to interpret images with superior accuracy and faster speed.

The company’s proprietary algorithms unlock deep and hidden insights that aid physicians to characterise diseases, plan and deliver personalised treatment.

Suthirth Vaidya, Chief Executive Officer, Predible Health, further added, “Our clinical validation studies are displaying positive results; we are now working to bring our offerings into clinical practice.”

Future of Cancer Diagnosis – Predible Health

Predible Health was founded in May 2016 by Suthirth Vaidya (B.Tech, M.Tech from IIT Madras), Abhijith Chunduru (B.Tech, M.Tech from IIT Madras) and Deepak Mohan (PGDM IIM Ahmedabad, B.Tech IIT Madras) shortly after their research work at IIT Madras was completed.

Predible was an outcome of the research work that won the Longitudinal Multiple Sclerosis Lesion Segmentation Challenge held at the IEEE-International Symposium on Biomedical Imaging 2015.

At present, the company has two flagship products: Predible Liver and Predible Lung.

Predible Liver assists surgeons with precise planning for liver transplant and tumour resections, through instant analysis and 3D visualisation of liver lesions and hepatic structures.

Built completely on the cloud, the solution is easily accessible by hospitals across India with an Internet connection, enabling them to carefully plan surgeries and decrease morbidity.

On the other hand, Predible Lung helps in the interpretation of lung nodules from CT images and enables quicker detection and improved assessment of malignancy. Predible Lung is intended to help improve care for screening patients through improved early diagnosis.

In a media statement, the company claimed that since its inception, it has processed over 2 Mn images to train its deep learning algorithms and bring them to up to clinical accuracy.

Now, the company is targeting to reach 500 Mn images by December 2020, in a bid to bring accuracy of their products to levels that can match humans in any scenario.

Abhijith Chunduru, Chief Technology Officer, Predible Health, also informed, “Apart from commercial product development, we are also engaging with leading medical institutions to pursue research in advancing deep learning technology to solve high-impact problems in healthcare for developing countries such as India.”

Also, the company has tied up with Tata Memorial Hospital (Mumbai), Mahajan Imaging (Delhi) and Narayana Health (Bengaluru).

Startups Working Towards Cancer Treatments

A report by World Health Organisation revealed that deaths from cancer worldwide are projected to continue to rise to over 13.1 Mn in 2030.

In India, cancer is a major cause of morbidity and mortality. In the media statement, Predible also claimed that India is expected to have 1.7 Mn cancer patients by 2020.

In the growing startup ecosystem of the country, there are various startups working to aid in cancer diagnostics.

One of these is Bengaluru-headquartered OncoStem Diagnostics, founded in 2011, which is focused on personalised cancer treatment and planning through the development of tests that predict the chance of recurrence in patients.

Others include Ratan Tata-backed cancer therapeutic startup, Invictus Oncology, Celon Labs, iGenetics Diagnostics, etc.

With the recent funding from Unitus Seed Fund, it is to be seen how soon Predible Health can introduce its flagship products to aid cancer treatment in the country.