India Health Fund is collaborating with ACT, a non-profit venture philanthropy platform, to support Salcit Technologies in piloting Swaasa® – an AI-led solution that can revolutionize the detection and early treatment of tuberculosis in India.
Active case finding (ACF) is an established measure for the systematic screening of infectious diseases like TB in high-risk populations. In 2021, 73,772 patients were identified through ACF, but there is a lack of affordable, rapid response and sensitive screening tools that can help find the millions of active TB cases that often go undiagnosed. Currently used ACF methods are visual inspection, patient questionnaires, and assessing exposure to TB-infected individuals, but these have limited clinical application due to subjectivity in understanding patients’ symptoms and deducing test results.
This leads to 64% of symptomatic TB patients unable to seek appropriate care at the right time. India Health Fund and ACT for Health will co-fund the development of Swaasa®, an AI platform by Salcit Technologies that records cough sounds from suspected TB patients using a phone’s microphone and analyze them to detect the possible presence of pulmonary tuberculosis using a proprietary AI algorithm. Madhav Joshi, CEO – India Health Fund, said, “Swaasa® applies the latest advances in Artificial Intelligence to address this very need and holds the potential to transform TB care.”
