The scourge of tuberculosis (TB) may be largely a distant memory for most Americans and Europeans, but it killed roughly 1.25 million people last year around the world. A non-profit based in India, which accounts for more than a quarter of all cases, is developing AI tools that could boost efforts to eradicate the disease.
Roughly 10 million people a year fall ill with TB, making it one of the world’s most prevalent infectious diseases. In 2018, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi made an ambitious pledge to eliminate TB in India by 2025. With 2.5 million cases recorded in India last year, that goal clearly won’t be met; still, the country has invested hundreds of millions of dollars in a vast national TB program, and has reduced the disease’s incidence by about 18 percent between 2015 and 2023.
But diagnosing and treating the disease is a complex and lengthy process. TB is curable, but requires patients to undergo a strict six-month regimen of antibiotics. Any deviation from this program can quickly lead to drug resistance, so patients require constant supervision. And the gold standard approach to screening for the disease is chest X-Rays, which are difficult to conduct in the rural parts of India where TB is most common.
That’s why Indian non-profit Wadhwani AI has developed a suite of AI-powered tools to assist health workers detect undiagnosed cases, decide on treatment plans, and prevent people from dropping out of treatment. Working with the Indian government and the U.S. Agency for International Development, the organization is currently piloting these tools across the country. And Wadhwani’s director of solutions, Nakul Jain, says 2025 could see several incorporated into India’s national TB patient management system, Nikshay.
“We have seen some very encouraging results in the first few phases that we have launched and the government is supportive,” says Jain. “We are hoping that most of the solutions will now be integrated into the mainstream Nikshay application and they’ll be used across the country.”
Raghuram Rao, who works on TB programs at India’s Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, says that to meet the government’s ambitious goal of TB eradication, the ministry has embraced digital solutions. “Wadhwani AI’s innovative AI solutions, coupled with robust analytical support, have enhanced the program’s efforts to combat tuberculosis,” says Rao. “By enabling data-driven decision-making and aiding programmatic efficiency, Wadhwani AI has significantly supported us in the mission to end TB in India.”
How AI helps with diagnosing TB
One of the most promising tools Wadhwani has developed is an AI application that can detect potential TB infections from the sound of a patient’s cough. In India, health workers typically rely on symptom reporting to identify potential cases, and then send those people for a confirmatory X-ray, says Wadhwani’s chief AI scientist Alpan Raval. But the group wanted…
Read full article: AI-Powered Tools Take on Tuberculosis in India
The post “AI-Powered Tools Take on Tuberculosis in India” by Edd Gent was published on 12/19/2024 by spectrum.ieee.org