Intron Health, a pioneering healthcare technology startup, has recently announced receiving $1.6 million in pre-seed funding to further develop its cutting-edge clinical speech recognition platform.

The funding round was led by Microtraction and is aimed at advancing research, expanding distribution, and recruiting top tech talent.

This significant investment will strengthen Intron Health’s efforts to transform healthcare by addressing the challenges of data entry in electronic medical record adoption, particularly in developing countries.

Founded in 2020 by Tobi Olatunji, Intron Health is on a mission to digitise healthcare and improve the efficiency of healthcare documentation. The company’s innovative speech recognition platform supports over 200 accents and a diverse range of African languages.

This technology has been proven to accurately transcribe medical terminologies both online and offline, significantly boosting documentation efficiency.

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As a result, healthcare providers in Nigeria, Ghana, Kenya, South Africa, and Uganda have experienced a remarkable sevenfold increase in the speed of completing documentation.

Tobi Olatunji MD, founder of Intron Health, expressed enthusiasm about the company’s progress, stating, “We are excited about the adoption and growth we’ve seen over the past year, which shows we are addressing a significant need.”

The platform has not only reduced documentation time for healthcare providers but has also enhanced overall efficiency and healthcare outcomes.

Intron Health has formed strategic partnerships with industry leaders such as Google Research, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and Digital Square at PATH to evaluate large language models in global health.

Additionally, the company is actively involved in the Commonwealth Artificial Intelligence Consortium, working to extend cutting-edge AI technologies to the Commonwealth Small States.

The timing of Intron Health’s innovation is particularly relevant in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, which has accelerated the adoption of digitised healthcare in both public and private hospitals across Africa.

However, the transition to digitised healthcare has presented new challenges, with clinicians spending up to three times the usual time on patient interactions due to inefficient data entry methods.

Intron Health’s clinical speech recognition platform is set to address this challenge, facilitating a seamless and efficient transition to digitised healthcare across Africa.

With its extensive database of 3.5 million audio clips (16,000 hours) from over 18,000 contributors representing 29 countries and 288 accents, Intron Health boasts Africa’s largest clinical speech database.

The platform has already been adopted in 30 hospitals across five markets, including Kenya and Nigeria, with plans for further expansion.

Intron Health’s focus on technological advancement includes perfecting noise cancellation, ensuring optimal performance in low-bandwidth environments, enabling multi-speaker conversation transcription, and integrating text-to-speech capabilities.

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These efforts underscore the company’s commitment to delivering a comprehensive, high-quality solution tailored to the specific needs of the healthcare sector in Africa.

Intron Health’s remarkable achievement in raising $1.6 million in pre-seed funding reflects the growing interest and investments in transformative healthcare technologies.

As the global speech- and voice-recognition market continues to expand, projected to reach a value of $84.97 billion by 2032, the future looks promising for innovative startups like Intron Health, which are driving positive change in the healthcare industry.