NIGERIA – Health tech startup leveraging big data infrastructure and artificial intelligence (AI), Uburu Health, has brought together the University of Nigeria Teaching Hospital (UNTH), Lagos University Teaching Hospital (LUTH), and Stanford University, to develop an AI-driven diagnostic tool for skin diseases.
The tripartite collaboration will see dermatologists across Africa benefit from an easy-to-use, inexpensive, and accurate diagnostic tool.
The collaboration amongst the three institutions would see the utilization of existing classified skin lesion datasets, first from UNTH and then LUTH, and will be insightful in validating and training an AI model.
Uburu Health is a health technology company focused on innovations that ease access to healthcare data within the African continent, with an aim to improve health outcomes by boosting clinical and pharmaceutical research and development.
Christoph Sadee, a biomedical informatics expert at Stanford University’s Gevaert Lab acknowledged the collaboration saying, “AI for augmenting human capabilities has leaped forward in recent months with the emergence of ChatGPT and similar foundational models.”
Sadee remarked that the technology had the potential to revolutionize medical treatment in underserved communities and even in nations with insufficient access to healthcare.
The Standford researcher noted that a prevailing challenge, however, was that such models are trained on datasets unrepresentative of these communities, which results in significantly poorer performance.
He added that of the many promises of Artificial intelligence, the potential to augment the capabilities of doctors by expanding their ability to provide more personalized and cost-effective care to patients, stood out most and especially, for health care in resource-limited environments.
Prof Olivier Gevaert at Stanford’s Biomedical informatics center said that the new collaborative study between Stanford University and Nigerian Institutions, to train a fair, unbiased foundational model, and leveraging on pre-existing partnerships.
Prof. Gevaert mentioned, “The model aims to, first, assemble a diverse skin lesion image dataset; second, jointly train a foundational model using Stanford’s and newly gathered data; and third, test this model within Nigeria and African-American communities in the US.”
A new model to help Africans better understand skin diseases
The Uburu Health model will be deployed and clinical trial tested for real-life patients, under supervision by dermatologists in Nigeria at the University of Nigeria Center for Excellence for Clinical Trials (UNNCECT).
A smartphone interface will be created to query a server hosting the model, and patients will then rate its usefulness, while dermatologists evaluate its correctness and accuracy.
The findings will be published along with the collected data for future AI researchers.
Prof Ifeoma J. Okoye, Director at UNNCECT and advisory board member at Uburu Health, reaffirmed that the potential impact of the collaboration would bring to Nigerian patients who would benefit from faster, cost-effective, and personalized dermatology care from their Doctors.
Prof Okoye welcomed the collaboration and urged for more research initiatives that drove value to African patients while addressing the global paucity of African datasets in AI R&D.
Dr Nkiru Onodugo and Dr Ayesha Akinkugbe, co-lead local experts and consultant dermatologists at UNTH and LUTH respectively, expressed excitement at the potential impact.
The researchers noted that considering the paucity of dermatology specialists in Nigeria with a current ratio of less than 1 dermatologist to 2.4 million Nigerian.
Furthermore, a positive outcome of this collaboration would augment existing dermatology service delivery via better-informed referrals and teledermatology.
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