A partnership with healthcare giant Roche will enable Qritive to scale up its AI diagnostic tool, says its co-founder and CTO
Diagnosing cancer is like searching for a tiny, disguised needle in a haystack and every second counts. To tackle this immense challenge, Qritive, co-founded by Gen.T Leader of Tomorrow Dr Kaveh Taghipour, is harnessing the power of artificial intelligence for cancer diagnosis.
While there are a few companies in the same space, it is the only company in Singapore, and one of the few worldwide, who have regulatory-approved AI products for cancer diagnosis in pathology labs.
Says Taghipour, “Even though we are a relatively small company, we have won against our major competitors (who have hundreds of millions of dollars in funding) when our products were compared to competing solutions. This is why we have been referred to as the ‘Porche of histopathology AI companies’ in this field.”
To further magnify its impact, Qritive announced a partnership with Swiss healthcare giant Roche in September, allowing them to scale up their AI diagnostic tool and increase the speed and accuracy of cancer diagnosis. Taghipour, who also serves as Qritive’s CTO, explains, “Our partnership with Roche allows us to leverage Roche’s extensive install base, enabling us to deploy our AI solutions on a global scale more efficiently, enhancing their existing digital pathology platform.”
He adds, “Our AI products are integrated into the familiar Roche [Navify Digital Pathology] interface, allowing hospitals and labs to easily access and implement our solutions without the need for changes to their existing workflows.”
This technology has the potential to be life-changing for patients, especially considering the devastating global impact of cancer. With 10 million lives lost to cancer each year, the need for early and accurate diagnosis is critical.
According to a statement by Qritive, “These tools have been shown to improve pathology reporting time by up to ten-fold and reduce the risk of misdiagnosis dramatically.” For now, these AI modules can analyse colon, prostate, breast and gastric cancers with accuracy.
Says Taghipour, “By automating routine tasks, Qritive’s AI helps pathologists reduce stress and improve the accuracy of [pathologists’] reporting, enabling them to focus more on patient care.”
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Above Taghipour believes that Qritive’s partnership with Roche will enable pathologists to make more accurate and timely diagnoses (Photo: Darren Gabriel Leow/Tatler Gen.T)
A personal passion
Qritive was co-founded in 2017 by Taghipour with the mission to “make cancer diagnosis more accurate and affordable, leading to improved health equity in the world”.
In 2023, the startup raised US$7.5 million, in a round led by MassMutual, with participation from Seeds Capital and Exfinty Venture Partners.
When the news was launched, Chinnu Senthilkumar, managing partner at Exfinity Venture Partners said, “The prevalence of cancer is rising globally, and by 2030, Asia will account for nearly half of all cancer cases worldwide. Speed and accuracy are of utmost importance, especially in the backdrop of a severe pathologist shortage. The clinical-grade AI-powered technology from Qritive transforms diagnosis to NextGen by being disruptive and accurate, removing the existing bottlenecks and supporting pathologists at every stage.”
Taghipour’s commitment to fighting cancer is deeply personal. Having witnessed the devastating effects of the disease on loved ones, he channels his expertise in Natural Language Processing and his passion for healthcare into Qritive’s mission.
“Cancer kills more than 28,000 people every day. I have lost close relatives to cancer and have seen first hand how dealing with cancer impacts people and their families. Trying to make an even small impact on this global health issue keeps me energised to push forward.”
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