IIM Calcutta alumni has built a unique screening mobile app- TimBre, this app detects tuberculosis by listening to the sound of cough.
Indians have a tendency of overlooking health symptoms unless it becomes “serious”, which is ironic, since the country is also home to numerous life-threatening diseases such as tuberculosis (TB).
According to WHO’s Global Tuberculosis Report 2019, India has the highest number of patients suffering from tuberculosis in the world.
Around 26.9 lakh people fell ill with the contagious disease in 2018 in India. The worse thing about TB is that it can happen anywhere to anyone, most likely to be in adults.
One of the reasons why TB is so prevalent in India is due to late diagnosis. This was something Rahul Pathri, a biotechnology specialist, also recognised.
As somebody who had a devastating personal experience with TB, Pathri had always worked on developing affordable and accessible healthcare solutions.
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An app to diagnose tuberculosis non-invasively was one such solution.
About the app whic detects TB
In 2016, the IIM Calcutta alumni had teamed up with some like-minded people- Balakrishna Bagadi, Arpita Singh and Vaishnavi Reddy have formed Docturnal, a healthtech firm dedicated to developing solutions to detect lung-based diseases.
It has built a screening mobile app- TimBre which detects TB in a patient by listening to the sound of cough.
A machine learning algorithm was fed data of nearly 7000 infected TB cough. The result- a mobile app that can detect TB with over 85% accuracy.
For India, which has the highest number of patients suffering from TB in the world, this can be path-breaking.
“It uses artificial intelligence and machine learning to make the cough interpretation. It is easy, non-invasive, affordable and an easily accessible procedure for TB diagnosis,” Rahul told.
