IDEAS Alum: Insightiv Wins HealthTech Hub Africa Challenge
Insightiv was a 2020 finalist of the PKG Center’s IDEAS Social Innovation Challenge and was awarded $16,000 that year for this outstanding proposal. Insightiv is an Intelligent and Distributed Diagnostics Platform that leverages connectivity and Artificial Intelligence (A.I.) to optimize the workflow for doctors, radiographers and radiologists, allowing them to effectively serve more patients from all over Rwanda in a short amount of time.
To read the full announcement from The Novartis Foundation, click here.
Insightiv Technologies, a Rwandan company, won the inaugural competition for African health start-ups and will receive a financial prize and other support to develop its technology. Insightiv’s innovative teleradiology and AI platform is designed to have a major impact in democratizing access to medical imaging diagnostics. The HealthTech Hub Africa is part of a new investment push that aims to revolutionize the development of health technologies designed by Africans for use in Africa.
The HealthTech Hub Africa will host up to 30 health technology start-ups from sub-Saharan Africa, at a new purpose-built facility located at Norrsken House in Kigali, Rwanda. It will also support a health tech network to bring policymakers and entrepreneurs together so that innovations can be scaled up rapidly. Supported by the Novartis Foundation, in collaboration with the Norrsken Foundation, the initial focus will be on technologies helping in the fight against heart disease, breast cancer, and in developing virtual health and care.
The 30 were chosen through an open competition, with the top five start-ups winning financial support. The first-place winner will receive USD 30,000, second place receives USD 20,000, third place receives USD 20,000, fourth place receives USD 10,000 and fifth place receives USD 5,000. Winners have come from Cameroon, Ghana and Nigeria as well as Rwanda.
The winner of the competition, Insightiv, is developing advanced technology to help radiologists detect life-threatening diseases faster, making medical imaging timely and accessible. Audace Nakeshimana, the Founder & Executive Chairman of Insightiv said, “We are very excited with our forthcoming move to HealthTech Hub Africa. In Rwanda and across the continent, low access to radiologists is a profound healthcare challenge. We believe our technology will improve care by increasing the capacity of healthcare providers and enabling patients to be diagnosed accurately, efficiently, and remotely.”
Audace Nakeshimana founded Insightiv and began developing the technology in 2019, while completing his studies for a Computer Science degree at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in the U.S. He established the company in Rwanda to involve local talent in the development of the technology, and ensure the solution can focus on solving the problem in an African context. This is particularly important as the regulatory and market constraints in Rwanda and other sub-Saharan countries are different from those in the global North.
Tags: Health, Health & Medicine, IDEAS, IDEAS 2020, IDEAS Alumni Profiles, PKG Alumni, Tech for Good
