From neonatal health to wildlife conservation, AI comes to the aid of society

Preterm delivery, infection of placental tissues, having a catheter in a blood vessel for a long time, staying in the hospital for an extended period of time are among the common reasons for the neonatal sepsis.

Hyderabad: From neonatal health to wildlife conservation, from communication to marketing – artificial intelligence is turning out to be the best solution to solve many problems or to assist doctors and scientists to be proactive in providing solutions to problems that would have an impact on people.

For instance, here is city-based startup Avyantra Health Technologies, which developed PreSco, a cloud-based artificial intelligence and machine learning platform that enables rapid diagnosis of neonatal sepsis, a bacterial infection among infants below 90 days.

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Babies get infection from their mother or during the delivery. Preterm delivery, infection of placental tissues, having a catheter in a blood vessel for a long time, staying in the hospital for an extended period of time are among the common reasons for the neonatal sepsis.

“We are trying to diagnose the bacterial infections without blood tests. This will help doctors to be proactive with their treatment,” said KVKLN Rao, Founder and Director of Avyantra.

According to him, the platform will help in reducing the antimicrobial resistance (AMR), which occurs when bacteria, viruses, fungi and parasites change over time and no longer respond to medicines. This will also aid in reducing the infant mortality rate. The platform is ideal for low-resource setups and rural areas, he said.

SDG3 Health, also from Hyderabad, developed a platform that diagnoses anaemia by taking a photograph of the person’s eyes. The mobile-based solution removes the need for pricking with needles for drawing blood for tests. Also, the platform helps in monitoring the response to the treatment. This finds use in identifying anaemia among pregnant, new mothers and school children on a population scale. The company had pitched the solution to the Telangana Government Health Department, said Dr Pranav Nimmagadda, Co-Founder, SDG3 Health.

Another Hyderabad-based artificial intelligence solutions company, Garudalytics, uses AI for wildlife conservation. Its Chief Executive Officer Dr VSS Kiran said Geospatial artificial intelligence can also be used in management of epidemics and outbreaks. The company has used machine learning tools to predict the cases during the Covid 19. It can also play a role in emergency response, disaster awareness and prediction, he said.

Talkingtown from Bengaluru is using an artificial intelligence platform for teaching English through gamification. The focus is on building English language skills in the same way people learn native languages. This allows interaction by brands to subsidise the learning for end users. This is suited for Tier 2 cities, said Nishtha Rohatgi, Founder and CEO.

Manu Kohli, Chief Technology Officer of Gurugram-based Cogniable, said it developed a tool to diagnose, detect and manage children with autism. Autism incidence is high and early diagnosis is the key for its effective management. However, conducting tests to identify autism needs skilled manpower. The AI-based platform can be used by parents without having to depend on outside resources and is suited for mass screening.

Telangana Government too is finding and supporting AI solutions. The Telangana AI Mission (T-AIM) now has 62 startups for its Revv Up acceleration programme. It enables and empowers AI startups through structured interventions. Revv Up has so far impacted over 140 AI startups. Social listening and monitoring, fraud detection and prevention, digital media, dialogue management, effective handling of academic content, yield prediction and geo tagging of trees and buildings are the use cases that the companies are working on.