A DUBAI START-UP IS HELPING PATIENTS CUT THROUGH MEDICAL JARGON IN LAB REPORTS
▶ Kelsey Warner talks to the founders of Medicus AI, who want to make routine test results more user-friendly
Seven per cent of all searches on Google are about health, mounting up to a staggering 70,000 medical-related queries a minute.
We are all, to some degree, curious or anxious about our bodies. Medicus AI, a health technology company started in Dubai in 2015, is looking to capitalise on that natural inclination. The app translates medical reports and health data into easy-to-understand, personalised explanations and recommendations for users.
Apps for improving overall well-being – such as tracking if you are getting enough sleep, eating well and moving enough – are one of the world’s hottest digital trends. Studies show this may be a good thing: about 80 per cent of health outcomes are caused by things that happen outside of the medical system, such as eating and exercise habits, socioeconomic status and where we live. All of these factors have a bigger impact on health than the care received in a clinical setting, according to consultancy Deloitte.
Medicus AI is taking it a step further by combining the everyday activity of a user with interpretations of their latest medical test results, including vital signs, family history, current medications, and the most commonly-tested blood, urine and stool markers, which are submitted by the company’s lab and hospital clients. Patients are then prompted to set up an account so they can see their results in simple, conversational language. The platform also recommends ways to make more healthy choices, like a daily step goal or a follow-up appointment with a physician.
“Just as the average time medical practitioners are spending with patients is declining, our curiosity is increasing,” Dr Baher Al Hakim, the chief executive and co-founder of Medicus AI tells
The National. “Our concrete idea was to work with blood tests, but the bigger, more abstract concept was to completely redesign health care.”
Diagnostic labs produce billions of reports annually, but the industry has struggled to introduce user-friendly technology products to inform its customers.
Medicus AI, which has two full-time and nine part-time medical doctors on staff, combines human-verified data analysis with artificial intelligence to produce the reports.
Dr Al Hakim, who grew up in Syria and moved to Dubai in 2005 after graduating from dentistry school in Damascus, has been a serial entrepreneur for 15 years. But he says Medicus AI is showing the most
promise. “In the past I was naive enough to believe the ideas in my head were good enough,” he says.
After a decade of stymied attempts at launching a digital agency, a FinTech company and a rapid R&D firm, in 2015 he had a chance conversation with his best friend about his latest idea to turn blood test results into the basis for a health app. That conversation led to
Dr Al Hakim’s meeting with his friend’s sister Dr Nadine Nehme who was looking to move to Dubai.
Dr Nehme, who holds a PhD in molecular and cellular biology and has a post-doctorate in immunology and genetics, was finding herself restless as an assistant professor at universities in Beirut.
Dr Nehme says she is a “scientist at the core” and was eager to expand her reach beyond the classroom.
She describes her 2015 meeting with Dr Al Hakim as effortless, and with her research background and his entrepreneurial instincts, they agreed to go into business together that day.
Less than a year later, the first iteration of the app was coded and they partnered with a lab in Dubai to perform 120 blood tests on family, friends and prospective investors. The initial tests were routine, checking things such as white and red blood cell count, glucose and cholesterol levels to see if a patient is vulnerable to infection, is pre-diabetic or has high cholesterol.
The results were analysed by the lab then uploaded to the Medicus AI app, which converted them into plain English, telling if you are healthy or not?
“Even the completely healthy people really liked to see their results,” Dr Al Hakim says.
With valuable user feedback and a proof of concept in hand, they landed $600,000 (Dh2.20 million) in seed funding, led by Audalion Ventures in Dubai and Speed Invest, a venture capital fund from Austria.
And then the team made a bold move.
With Dr Nehme still in Dubai, her co-founder moved to the Austrian capital Vienna.
“There was a lack of deep tech and capital in Dubai,” Dr Al Hakim says. In order to grow, Medicus AI was after hospital clients that were the largest in their given market, processing a minimum of a million lab results a year. To start out, they decided to focus on Europe.
The decision paid off. A year ago, when Medicus AI closed Series A funding of €5m (Dh20.2m), it reported annual revenue of almost €1m, with its client list including Al Borg Labs in Saudi Arabia and Roche Diagnostics in France. Clients pay a base subscription fee, and then pay per report sent to a patient.
The app is white labelled for each client.
Today, Medicus AI has headquarters in Vienna, with offices in Dubai, Paris, Berlin and Beirut. From a couple of dozen hospital clients in Germany, France and Austria, this year the company “is doubling in the Middle East”, according to Dr Al Hakim.
Of the 119 employees about 80 are on the product side: researchers and AI engineers who make the content relevant in Arabic, German, French and English.
Last month Medicus AI achieved a milestone, receiving a medical device classification for its mobile app in the European Union, which means it can be freely sold anywhere in the EU and will be helpful to expand worldwide.
Just in time, too. At the end of last year, the company announced it was looking to raise $22m in the first half of 2020, led by a Chinese fund, and began an aggressive expansion plan into China’s technology capital, Shenzhen. However, the plan to hire 18 people is facing delays amid uncertainty over the spread of the coronavirus and containment measures being implemented in the country.
Dr Nehme says she is most excited about a pilot project with China’s biggest life insurance provider to expand the app to serve pregnant women in Hong Kong.
“I was so overwhelmed in my first pregnancy, even though I understood what the doctor was telling me,” she says.
“This came from personal need. We all want to make the best of what we have to help ourselves be healthier.”