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BI Africa  >  local  >  careers


HURONE AI IS SOLVING AFRICA’S BREAST CANCER PROBLEM WITH USER-FIRST TECHNOLOGY

Ayoola Adetayo
April 17, 2023 3:32 PM



Their solution is simple, effective, and potentially groundbreaking.

Hurone AI launched operations in Rwanda with a user-first approach that supports
both doctors and patients.


Cancer continues to pose serious health challenges globally, and while rapid
advancements are being made in terms of care, not much of that impact is felt in
Africa and other underrepresented populations around the world.



For example, there are less than 15 oncologists in Rwanda for a population of
13.5 million people, while Nigeria has about 84 oncologists for a population of
over 200 million. This means that there’s one oncologist to 3,000 patients in
Sub-Saharan Africa, while in the USA, the ratio is one oncologist to 187
patients.

Hurone AI, a MedTech startup founded by Dr Kingsley Ndoh, is building
revolutionary and culturally-sensitive digital health solutions, powered by
artificial intelligence to address this health equity gap. Their current focus
is on breast cancer because it's the most common type, but their software is
expanding to address other cancers.

Nigeria-born Ndoh, who is now based in Seattle, Washington, started the company
to honor the memory of his aunt who died of colon cancer. He noticed the gaps in
care during her treatment which started with a misdiagnosis and inability to get
screening. In Nigeria, screening for colorectal cancer begins at the age of 50.
Ndoh’s aunt died at 51.

Dr Kingsley Ndoh, CEO of Hurone AI is working hard to make cancer treatment
accessible to Africans in Africa. Hurone AI/Kingsley Ndoh


Hurone AI’s software is also built to gather anonymous patient data to support
pharmaceutical companies in ensuring clinical trial diversity to boost the
safety and efficacy of cancer drugs.

“In the past 20 years of approvals of cancer medications by America’s FDA, less
than 3% of the clinical trial participants that led to the approval of those
drugs are black,” says Ndoh.

“There are so many side effects that we don't really know about, or even how
those drugs affect people of African descent and other underrepresented
communities.”

Hurone AI launched operations in Rwanda with a user-first approach that supports
both doctors and patients. Its software, Gukiza [meaning ‘healing’ in
Kinyarwanda, the Rwandese local language] enables patients to report side
effects and other concerns from their phones. Doctors and oncology care teams
can also collect important clinical data which aids their treatment efforts in
three minutes or less by using the application.

“So we did focus group interviews with patients and survivors to find out what
their greatest pain points are. We interviewed doctors, we also had an
engagement with the government. We honed down on solving one problem, mainly
from stakeholder and user engagement; and we can see the results now because
people can already tell that what we have here is great,” Dr. Ndoh tells
Business Insider.

Information obtained and stored on Gukiza makes it easy to track patients’
medical history, past complaints, reactions to certain medications, treatment
modules, and other important details which, in the long run, creates a specific
and trackable chart for each patient.

Artificial Intelligence and the future of cancer treatment

Data is essential to everything Hurone AI does as a company. To underscore this,
the company was one of the earliest recipients of Amazon Web Service [AWS]’s
Health Equity Initiative award. Hurone AI was also recognized by the White House
Cancer Moonshot last December and listed in LinkedIn’s “41 Big Ideas that will
change our world in 2023.” The value of this support is immense in the grand
scheme of things at Hurone AI, Dr. Ndoh explains to Business Insider.

A screenshot of Hurone AI's software, Gukiza, which is making cancer better
tracked and managed in Africa. Hurone AI/Kingsley Ndoh


In the founder’s words: “We're building very valuable data so that as we scale,
we can now have a stronger model that helps predict who is going to drop out of
treatment, based on historical data. We can also study the medications and how
patients react to them. This way, treatments are more precise with fewer side
effects. These are some of the things we want to achieve with machine learning.”

Hurone AI plans to expand to other countries like Nigeria, Kenya and Brazil with
more to follow once the company scales. “We are currently raising a seed round
of $2 million to support our scaling efforts. The money will be used to support
our current team, hire key staff, upgrade our system to support various cancers
and expand our operations into new markets.”

Hurone AI’s operations could potentially be a game-changer for the treatment of
cancer all over the world. There’s a growing global oncology workforce shortage
that absolutely necessitates the use of medical technology to address the gaps
in cancer care. That’s why Hurone AI eventually intends to export their
learnings.

“We want to use our learnings to also close the disparities in places like the
United States where not much of that data is available,” Dr. Ndoh concludes.

Tags:
 * Healthcare

Ayoola Adetayo



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