AI Diagnostics Secures $5M To Fight The Silent TB Epidemic
🩺 Meet AI Diagnostics
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AI Diagnostics is a Cape Town-based startup that builds screening tools for healthcare workers in South Africa.
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They’ve just closed an R85M ($5M) pre-Series A round.
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Investor check. The Steele Foundation for Hope led the round, with iFSP Group and the Global Innovation Fund participating.
🫁 Finding the Silent Cases
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Tuberculosis is hard to track because 58% of people with the infection in South Africa don't show any symptoms during standard checks.
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Many clinics can't afford the expensive X-ray machines or specialists needed to find these cases. The result is a massive gap in how we detect and treat the disease.
🎧 The Smart Stethoscope
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Their Ostium digital stethoscope uses AI to find sound patterns in lungs that a human ear can't pick up.
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The team built the hardware and database in local clinics to make sure the tech works in high-burden, real-world settings.
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It already has a green light from the South African Health Products Regulatory Authority and has been tested on over 1,000 patients.
🌍 Scaling Up
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They are starting clinical studies in more than 10 other countries to prove the tech works elsewhere.
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Looking ahead, they plan to update the software to catch other heart and lung conditions beyond TB, and distributing the solution to more countries.