Feedback Medical Limited is delighted to announce that it has been awarded the Gold Award for Digital Solution for Rural Healthcare at the Integrated Health and Wellbeing Council of India’s (IHW) Digital Health Awards 2024 in New Delhi.
Feedback Medical was recognised at the awards for its Bleepa solution which supports a more efficient, streamlined process for identifying patients that indicate positive results for tuberculosis (TB) in rural and hard-to-reach locations. It has been working with the Evangelical Hospital Khariar in Odisha since 2022 to support the hospital’s TB screening programme.
Supporting TB screening programmes in rural communities
Bleepa uses local mobile networks to securely push X-rays, acquired in rural settings, to a dedicated cloud environment where they can be processed by AI to assist interpretation. Specialists can review the images using Bleepa’s in-app clinical grade image viewer and chat directly with the care team in the rural setting to reach the correct management plan for the patient, supported by the AI-generated report.
Bleepa connects with Qure.ai’s AI platform so the images can be processed and interpreted, returning the results within a matter of minutes. This helps the radiologist to triage the scan and flag any abnormalities which would indicate a TB diagnosis.
Since the start of the project in March 2022 nearly 2,000 patients have been screened at the hospital, with 19.6% of scans coming back as indicating positive for signs of TB.
Dr Nibedita Paramanik, Medical Director for the Evangelical Hospital Khariar, said: “Since we started using Bleepa at our hospital a few months ago, it has helped us with quicker TB screening and identification. Through this technology, we have been able to save time and start early treatment for TB patients.”
Dr Tom Oakley, Feedback Medical’s CEO, said: “We are honoured to be recognised by the IHW in India for our groundbreaking work with Bleepa connecting clinicians across care settings and bringing AI diagnostics to rural communities in the fight against TB.
“Bleepa connects care teams from multiple settings around an individual patient, presents them with all relevant results and diagnostics data and allows them to make collaborative, remote decisions at speed. This allows us to bring healthcare to any community and any patient, no matter where they are located.
“Our ability to handle DICOM data and other clinical file types means that we can facilitate the deployment of the latest AI tools into these settings, alongside the clinical conversation.”
The pilot is also delivered in partnership with Amazon Web Services, which supports the cloud services to the hospital with its technology and contributed to funding via its Diagnostic Development Initiative.
Feedback Medical’s work began in India with a Department of Industry and Trade mission in 2020 to explore opportunities in the healthcare market. It features in the UK’s Digital Health Playbook promoting UK companies in international healthcare markets.
The Awards took place as part of the IHW Digital Health Summit on 18-19 January at the Ambedkar International Centre, New Delhi, India’s biggest networking summit for health tech leaders.
